The Nintendo Switch 2 uses this storage tech—why doesn’t your PC?
The first computers I used in my life only had floppy disk drives. One for the operating system and one for the software you want to run. Even when hard drives and CD-ROM drives appeared on the scene, the humble floppy disks remained mostly until USB drives finally filled the need.
However, USB drives still aren’t exactly a replacement for the way we use floppy disks. After all, you’re essentially carrying the entire disk with you, rather than just the storage media. I’ve used SD cards as mobile storage for years, but they’re just too slow for general modern computer use, but what about SD Express?
MicroSD Express turns a memory card into a small PCIe reader
Although MicroSD Express cards can look like normal SD cards on the outside, on the inside things couldn’t be more different. These cards combine the SD card format with the NVMe protocol used by modern SSDs and the PCIe bus. The result is actually a mini-SSD capable of reading data at up to 985 MB/s and writing it at up to 700 MB/s.
Additionally, these cards have many of the other advantages of true SSDs when it comes to parallel operations and random read requests. Which makes them suitable for running software. This is why the new Nintendo Switch 2 can run video games like Cyberpunk 2077 from MicroSD Express cards.
While this is much slower than the typical M.2 NVMe drive that people use in their computers, MicroSD Express cards can be significantly faster than SATA SSDs, which are still widely used and are still more than fast enough to run most software without issue. This also includes modern games with intense data streaming.
PCs have lost their universal removable storage
Although it is normal for laptops to have standard SD card readers, it is not at all usual for laptops, and especially desktop computers, to have MicroSD Express card readers. Which is a shame, because PCs don’t have a solution like floppy disks in modern times, and I think MicroSD Express could fill that demand very well.
You might say USB solved this problem and we don’t need it, but when I need to use USB storage I’m always looking for an open port or a port that matches the performance of the drive I’m trying to connect. There’s something to be said for a dedicated external storage location on a computer.
Additionally, as the disk remains in the computer, the cards occupy path less physical space than even the smallest USB stick. It’s also not insignificant to have a drive that fits fully into a drive and doesn’t hang or protrude from the side like a USB external storage device does.
Internal SSDs are expensive, and even with 2TB of storage I still run out of them. Moving these SSDs to USB doesn’t do anything for the cost, and it’s bulky and impractical. Still, I use external storage a lot to actively run software, which means I have to use these SSDs. There is no real alternative.
Having a small removable card that’s fast enough for just about any normal computing application, much smaller, cheaper per gigabyte, and can be replaced in seconds seems like a niche to fill.
Why SD Express hasn’t taken off yet
MicroSD Express has been around for a while now, but it hasn’t made much of an impact. The MicroSD Express USB drives you can buy today are a bit expensive. Although they are at least backwards compatible with regular MicrosSD cards. Even high-end laptops like MacBooks don’t come standard with this new card reader.
So it’s not strange that this format hasn’t taken off yet. Only now with the release of the Nintendo Switch 2, which uses MicroSD Express for storage expansion, is there public interest. I expect Nintendo to sell millions and millions of these consoles, which will hopefully help bring down the price of the cards. Now this is of interest to more than just photo and video nerds.
I hope that once people realize that MicroSD Express cards can effectively replace USB SATA SSDs and even USB NVMe drives (which don’t perform much better), the demand for them will increase. Of course, while MicroSD Express cards are much more robust than older SD cards, they are not as robust as traditional SSDs. So these drives still have a niche better served by the more durable types of NAND flash.
What would make SD Express important?
I don’t think SD Express cards will appeal to computer users until we start seeing more laptops with built-in MicroSD Express readers. An extra $100 for a size you may not think you need is a big challenge. However, once someone has a reader capable of reading these cards, included in the price of a new computer, then it makes sense to purchase support for the hardware you already own.
SSDs are great, but they’re not great as removable media, and SD cards and flash drives are too slow and unreliable in comparison. So I definitely think there’s an interesting niche between these two solutions that SD Express will fit nicely into.
