I bought my Nintendo Swap 2, and my inner storage is already filling up with all my outdated video games and saves! If you happen to’re in the identical boat, you’ll have additionally observed you’ll be able to’t simply jam within the SD card out of your unique Swap and preserve rocking. As an alternative, you may want a brand new microSD Specific card.
This Specific customary was introduced in late 2023, and it permits write speeds within the lots of of megabytes, however till now the playing cards themselves had been as uncommon as any gadgets that used the usual. Because of this, the playing cards are few and much between, and so they carry a big value premium over the extra frequent microSD playing cards. Earlier than I get too caught up within the value and availability although, let’s simply go over what the distinction is between Specific and customary microSD playing cards and what it means on your Swap 2.
Up to date July 2025: We have clarified particulars concerning the launch and utilization of microSD Specific, added hands-on testing with Samsung’s Nintendo-branded providing, and added speed-based benchmarks to complement the sensible testing.
Specific Lane
{Photograph}: Brad Bourque
As you might need guessed from the identify, microSD Specific playing cards are sooner, however to grasp precisely what which means, we have to break down what we imply by pace and the way it’s measured and displayed on microSD cards.
Regular, non-express playing cards use three metrics with some overlap in efficiency. We have an in-depth technical guide if you wish to know extra concerning the non-express playing cards, however I will give the brief model right here. There are three ranges: Velocity Class, denoted with a C, UHS Velocity Class, as marked by a U for Extremely Excessive Velocity Class, and Video Velocity Class, with a V.
No matter the way it’s displayed, the quantity signifies that the cardboard is ready to learn and write no less than that quick. For the Circle and the V, it’s a direct comparability, so a circle with a “10” in it has a 10MB/s sustained write pace. There are two U variants, 1 and three, which correspond to 10MB/s and 30MB/s respectively. Playing cards are virtually all the time suitable with slower gadgets, so you might even see a number of symbols and numbers on every card.
The indicator for Specific playing cards is, maybe unsurprisingly, a stylized EX or E, typically with a quantity subsequent to it. As soon as once more, this represents the cardboard’s sustained write pace, with formally supported ranges from 150MB/s as much as 600MB/s. Keep in mind that these are minimal speeds, so you might even see producers quote even larger numbers, however whether or not you’ll help these speeds will rely on the machine studying and writing to the cardboard.
