Topmore’s TA-101 card, at 389 yuan (about $54 dollars), may be the cheapest route you have to adding an extra 1TB of storage to your tablet – and tests show it’s not that bad as you might think.
A lot of the best microSD cards the ones out there today aren’t super fast when you compare them to the best hard drives or even SSDs. And that is to be expected.
The TeamGroup Elite A1 microSD cardFor example, we recorded a read speed of 92 MB/s and a write speed of 87 MB/s when tested via CrystalDiskMark in our review from a few years ago. Similarly, the Samsung Pro Endurance offers read speeds of 100 MB/s and write speeds of 40 MB/s, according to the manufacturer.
Not all cheap devices are bad deals
Enter the Topmore TA-101 white 1TB TF card, which is what the Chinese publication is MyDrivers has been branded the cheapest in the world. This is a TF card rather than a microSD card, meaning it is a previous generation technology but serves the same purpose.
Testing via CrystalDiskMark showed that read and write speeds of 95.8 MB/s and 93 MB/s respectively were in line with the manufacturer’s claims. This matches up perfectly with many of the cheapest microSD cards out there, including the Silicon power 1TB device, which has read and write speeds of 100 MB/s and 80 MB/s respectively. This, on the other hand, retails for $65.
However, CrystalDiskMark’s results are a little different than assessing real-world performance. When copying a 100GB file, there were some drops in quality when reviewed via HD Tune Pro, but performance when copying a 4K movie was relatively poor, with big speed drops at several points along the way.
While the TA-101 1TB is an attractive option, especially given its price, it may be worth waiting a little longer as Topmore recently announced that a 2TB version is in the works. While 1TB microSD cards are rare, 2TB versions are virtually unheard of.