Lexar and SanDisk to launch world's first UHS-III MicroSD cards this quarter

It hasn't even been a few weeks since the SD Association revealed its plans to introduce the UHS-III standard onto consumer SD cards and manufacturers are already jumping in on the latest tech. The upcoming Lexar Professional 1000x MicroSD card will be aimed at high-end smartphones and cameras and promises real-world read/write rates of up to 150/90 MB/s. This will allow the card to record native 4K video without any interruptions or pauses.

The new cards from both Lexar and SanDisk will each sport the UHS-III (U3) logo to guarantee a write rate of at least 30 MB/s. The bandwidth of these cards should be capable of reaching speeds of up to 312 MB/s or greater, but the memory cells themselves will write/read much more slowly in real-world applications.

To combat this speed deficit, the SanDisk Extreme MicroSD card will carry the "A1" label to indicate that it can read up to 1500 cells simultaneously or write up to 500 cells simultaneously when being accessed by the system. This ensures that multiple smartphone applications can access the MicroSD card at the same time without impeding read/write performance.

The 256 GB Lexar Professional 1000x will be available before the end of Q1 2017 for 400 Euros while the 256 GB SanDisk Extreme will retail for about $200 USD.

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