sd card News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

February 17, 2026February 17, 2026 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 4 Comments

60W Pocket Cloud is a microSD card reader with USB PD passthrough for your smartphone (Crowdfunding)

60W Pocket Cloud is a microSD card reader with 60W USB PD passthrough for your smartphone that works with Android (USB-C) and iOS (USB-C or Lightning) mobile devices, as well as other hosts with a spare USB port. Once upon a time, smartphone manufacturers would include a microSD card socket in their devices, but those have now become harder to find. If your device’s spare storage is getting dangerously low, you’d need to either purchase cloud storage or connect a microSD card reader to the USB-C port of your phone. The latter works, except you can’t charge your phone when it’s connected. Conner’s 60W Pocket Cloud brings back microSD card storage support to mobile devices, while still allowing USD PD charging during use. 60W Pocket Cloud specifications: Chipset – Vinpower iVP309 flash controller chip with 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps), SD 3.0 UHS-I, SDCX SD card interface, USB […]

August 1, 2025August 1, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

microSD-express Pi Adapter is an ultra-small microSD Express adapter for the Raspberry Pi 5

Tiny microSD Express adapter for Raspberry Pi 5

We’ve just written about Will Whang’s RPI5-SDexpress-Hat board, which adds a microSD Express slot to the Raspberry Pi 5, but it’s not that small, and it’s using the 40-pin GPIO for power, so it’s not convenient if you want to install another Raspberry Pi HAT+. Vassily Petrov’s “microSD-express Pi Adapter” is a much smaller microSD Express adapter on a flexible PCB that plugs directly into the PCIe FFC connector and nothing else, driving power from the PCIe connector only. There’s not much on the PCB itself besides a microSD Express card slot and a Microchip MIC2230 800mA/800mA step-down DC/DC regulator. We’re told speeds of up to 800 MB/s are achievable, limited by the PCIe Gen3 x1 interface on the Pi 5 itself. For reference, the RPI5-SDexpress-Hat was tested at about 600 MB/s for sequential reads and under 200MB/s for sequential writes using a 256GB Samsung microSD Express card. A worry […]

July 28, 2025July 28, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 12 Comments

Raspberry Pi 5 gets a microSD Express HAT

Will Whang’s RPI5-SDexpress-Hat is a small HAT+ for the Raspberry Pi 5, adding a microSD Express card slot for ultrafast storage, an eject button, and two Qwiic connectors, probably because there was still some spare space on the board… As a reminder, microSD Express cards can deliver SSD performance thanks to the use of of PCIe interface and NVMe commands. The standard was first introduced in 2019, and even earlier (2018) for full-size SD cards, but manufacturers have not exactly rushed to release compatible hardware. A major change this year is the launch of the Nintendo Switch 2 portable game console, one of the first mass market devices with a microSD Express slot, and this was partially why Will created the microSD Express HAT+ for the Raspberry Pi 5. RPI5-SDexpress-Hat board specifications: MCU – WCH CH32V003 RISC-V microcontroller for hotplugging and unmount Host interface – PCIe Gen3 x1 FFC connector […]

June 10, 2025June 11, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Adapter allows users to connect an M.2 NVMe SSD to a microSD Express card slot

The SD Association released the SD 7.1 standard with support for cards compliant with the microSD Express standard, enabling SSD-like performance on microSD cards by using a PCIe/NVMe interface, and more recent updates to the standard even enable speeds of up to 2GB/s. Saying that adoption has been slow would be an understatement, but things have changed recently, thanks to the introduction of the Nintendo Switch 2 portable game console, the first mainstream device to support the new standard. NVNT has had fun with it by designing a microSD Express to M.2 NVMe adapter (SDEX2M2) for the Nintendo Switch 2 or other devices supporting the microSD Express standard. The board design is pretty simple because it simply routes the PCIe signals from an M.2 NVMe 2230 SSD to the microSD Express connector. Three components can be found on the board: an M.2 2230 M-socket, a 220Ω ferrite bead, and an […]

April 22, 2025 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

512GB ADATA Premier Extreme SD 8.0 Express memory card delivers up to 1600MB/s read speed

ADATA Technology has launched the industry’s first SD 8.0 Express specification memory card with the Premier Extreme SD 8.0 Express memory card delivering up to 1,600 and 1,200 MB/s read and write speeds using a PCIe Gen3 x2 interface and the NVMe transfer protocol. The SD 7.0 specification was introduced in 2018, adding the SD Express standard using PCIe and NVMe Interfaces for speeds of up to 985 MB/s. Since then, the SD 9.0 specification was ratified in 2023 upping the speed to 4GB/s with SD 8.0 Express. But while the specifications have evolved over the years, and some SD and microSD Express cards were unveiled, including 256GB and 512GB Samsung microSD Express cards, market adoption has been slow since hosts need to support the new format, but few manufacturers do. You’ll find SD Express or microSD Express card readers, high-end cameras with an SD Express slot, and the upcoming […]

November 19, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 10 Comments

Raspberry Pi SSD Kit and Class A2 microSD cards review with Raspberry Pi 5

Raspberry Pi SSD Kit Class A2 MicroSD card review

Selecting a microSD card, and to a lesser extent an SSD, for your Raspberry Pi may feel like walking through a landmine field with fake microSD cards that may perform poorly and severely impact the performance and/or reliability of your Raspberry Pi, and you’ll find plenty of articles helping you select a good microSD card for your Raspberry Pi. That’s probably why Raspberry Pi Holdings decided to launch its own Raspberry Pi-branded class A2 microSD cards and NVMe SSDs, so users can be sure they got a certified storage device that should perform as advertised as long as they purchase those from some authorized resellers. The company sent me 32GB and 64GB Raspberry Pi microSD cards and a 256GB Raspberry Pi SSD kit for testing, so I’ll test those in this review and compare them against other SSDs and microSD cards I’m currently using. Since we’ve not covered the new […]

November 18, 2024November 18, 2024 by Debashis Das - 4 Comments

$29 Banana Pi BPI-CanMV-K230D-Zero features Kendryte K230D RISC-V SoC for AIoT applications

The Banana Pi BPI-CanMV-K230D-Zero is a compact and low-power single-board computer built around the Kendryte K230D dual-core XuanTie C908 RISC-V chip with an integrated third-generation Knowledge Process Unit (KPU) for AI computation. It follows the form factor of the Raspberry Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi Zero 2W board and targets IoT and ML applications. The SBC comes with 128MB of LPDDR4 RAM and uses a microSD card slot for storage. Additional features of this board include dual MIPI-CSI camera inputs for 4K video, a 40-pin GPIO header for I2C, UART, SPI, PWM, and more. Wireless features include 2.4GHz WiFi, USB 2.0 with OTG, and microphone support. These features make this SBC suitable for applications such as AI tasks such as image, video, and audio processing. Banana Pi BPI-CanMV-K230D-Zero Specifications SoC – Kendryte K230D CPU CPU1 – 64-bit RISC-V processor @ 1.6GHz with RVV 1.0 support CPU2 – 64-bit RISC-V processor […]

March 6, 2024March 6, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Samsung unveils 256GB microSD Express card with up to 800MB/s read speeds

Samsung has just started sampling its 256 GB SD Express microSD card (aka microSD Express card) with a sequential read speed of up to 800 MB/s through its PCIe/NVMe interface. The SD Express standard was first introduced in the SD specification ver 7.0 in 2018 adding pads for PCIe/NVMe interfaces in full-sized SD cards before the microSD Express standard was introduced in the SD 7.1 specification the following year. Since then, the SD association further improved the standard promising ever faster SD Express speeds up to 4GB/s and microSD Express speeds up to 2GB/s. Saying the adoption of the new SD Express and microSD Express standards has been slow would be an understatement, and the Samsung 256GB microSD Express card looks to be the world’s first such storage device. Looking at full-size SD Express cards, I could only find one on Amazon for $59.99 with 256GB capacity, 820 MB/s read […]