Exclusive: Micron’s 1.5TB MicroSD card costs more than diamond
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More than seven months after its unveiling, the world’s first 1.5 TB micro SD card, Microns MTSD1T5ANC8MS-1WT, has landed, well almost. A handful of tech wholesalers have listed the card, known as the i400, on their website, and depending on how many you need and what area you buy from, customers may have to wait at least four months. Mouser, Arrow and Avnet (plus its subsidiaries Farnell (opens in new tab), Newark (opens in new tab), Element14) have already listed it with Newark as the cheapest at Newark, just $420.53, a price that includes free shipping.
Buy at least 12,000 to see the price drop to $381 (with a total cost of over $4.5 million), not a bad price for 18 PB (yes, that’s Petabytes) of solid-state storage that’s no more than 4 kg may weigh (without the packaging of course). In case you were wondering, this microSD card costs about the same as its weight in 0.125 carat diamond ($1.1 million per kg).
Equally important is the data on these cards, so keep in mind that a microSD is smaller than a fingernail. We recommend backing up your data with a cloud storage solution (although you won’t find one free cloud storage that can be 1.5 TB).
What comes next?
Micron was the first with a 1 TB card. The C200 is almost four years old and only in recent months has the average price – and relative availability of – 1TB MicroSD cards improved. But how long the 1.5 TB capacity will remain king of the hill remains a mystery; Kioxia has unveiled a 2 TB Exceria Plus prototype in September 2022, but while a tentative 2023 launch has been rumored, it will likely depend on market conditions (i.e. whether there is enough demand).
For those interested in purchasing it, please note that it has a formatted capacity of 1,430,511 Megabytes. Samsung and Kingston, two of the largest providers of solid-state storage, have not yet released microSD cards with capacities of 1 TB or more.
At the time of writing, the cheapest 1 TB microSD card is a Silicon Power model at $87.99 (opens in new tab), about a third of the price per TB of Micron’s i40. Amazon has much more fake 1 TB microSD cards in its marketplace and this endemic problem has not yet been solved. If you buy a microSD card, make sure it’s one of these 14 brands: Samsung, Kingston, SP/Silicon Power, Teamgroup, Sandisk, WD, PNY, Lexar, Inland, Gigastone, Patriot, Transcend, Amazon Basics and Micro Center. We wouldn’t trust any other.