Go big or go home – PNY’s new PRO Elite Prime microSD cards go up to 1.5TB

Hot on the heels of SanDisk’s recent 2TB full-sized SD card announcement, PNY’s here with their new PRO Elite Prime microSD cards. The new range comes i capacities from 64GB (buy here) ll the way up to 1.5TB (buy here), with V30 speeds.

The V30 specification makes them ideal for action cameras, drones, and other devices that support large capacities. And when you’re unloading to your computer, you can pull it off at speeds of up to 200MB/sec using PNY’s new microSD card reader.

PNY PRO Elite Prime – Big storage, small package

PNY’s new PRO Elite Prime microSD card lineup is not the first to offer 1.5TB capacities. In June 2022, we saw Micron announce their 1.5TB microSD. This card didn’t become available until January last year. With only a Class 10 speed rating and a whopping $550+ price, it clearly wasn’t marketed towards the likes of us.

The new 1.5TB PNY Pro Elite Prime microSD, on the other hand, very much is. With V30 speeds, you’ll get the guaranteed minimum 30MB/sec write speeds that UHS-I microSD cameras and drones require. It also has an A2 rating, which should help speed things up (a little) when browsing through images on the back of your camera.

While the headline is obviously the 1.5TB card, the PNY Pro Elite Prime microSD cards also come in capacities of 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512TB, and 1TB. The prices are extremely reasonable, too, especially compared to what 1TB microSD cards used to cost.

New Card Reader – PNY Performance Prime

The UHS-I microSD card specification technically maxes out at 104MB/sec read and write speeds. To overcome this, PNY has implemented their own protocol to go beyond these speeds. So, to access them, you need to have one of their special readers that supports these speeds.

SanDisk does this, too, as does every other manufacturer offering microSD and SD cards with read and write speeds above 104MB/sec. But it does mean if you don’t want to be limited to 104B/sec, you’ll need to get that reader. And PNY has just announced a new one.

It’s the PNY Performance Prime microSD card reader. As the name suggests, it’s only for microSD cards, not full sized SD like the ProGrade PGM0.5, but it runs on USB 3.2 Gen 1 (or USB 3.0), and allows for write speeds of up to 150MB/sec and read speeds of up to 200MB/sec on your computer.

Sadly, the new card reader has a USB-A plug on it and not USB-C. So, if you want to transfer directly from microSD to your phone with this, you’ll need a USB-C adapter.

Price and Availability

The PNY Pro Elite Prime memory cards are available as individual cards or packs of 2 or 3 cards, depending on the capacity. Here’s the full list, along with the MSRPs. Some of the items aren’t available just yet, but we’ll be sure to add links when we see them become available.

• 64GB 3-Pack: $30.99 (buy here)
• 128GB 2-Pack: $32.99 (buy here)
• 256GB: $29.99
• 512GB: $49.99
• 1TB: $97.99 (buy here)
• 1.5TB: $109.99 (buy here)

The Performance Prime microSD microSD card reader is available on its own for $12.99 or in a pack with a single 128GB PYN Performance Pro Elite microSD card for $28.99. This, too, doesn’t appear to be available at the moment, but we’ll update when we spot it.

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