Almost a year after we have started benchmarking all the microSD cards, today, we have yet another card to add to the benchmark to share with you guys. Today, we have a card from a local (Singapore company), Strontium. You may have seen this brand around town (Giant supermarket) and more but, you may not have seen much benchmarks for this. Well, let us present to you their highest-tier card today!

Strontium has a few series only, starting from a low end of class 6 to Nitro Lite, to Nitro and last but not least, Nitro plus which is the one we will be taking a look at now.

Strontium Technology Pte Ltd was founded in 2002 and uses NAND’s from their partner’s for the cards, including Samsung, Micron and Toshiba. As such, they only manufacture the cards from the wafers from they have purchased, in house. The card, in this instance is backed by a life-time warranty whilst the accessory has just a standard of 1 year.

Distributed by Kaira Technologies, the lifetime warranty in this case would only require one to bring down the microSD card to initiate the RMA. This card (Nitro PLUS) is based on MLC whilst the rest of the cards are based on TLC. So, without further ado, let us introduce the card!

The card we have in this case is the 3-in-1 version, which comes with a USB 2.0 adapter and a microSD to SD card reader. For such a high speed card, it is a pity to see them provision it with just a USB 2.0 card since it will definitely limit the speed. However, our main test will still be on the same rig as the other cards.

The card itself is in shiny golden colour with red stating the company name, logo as well as series and the capacity and rating.

On the reverse, we have the serial number and model number laser etched onto the card. Apart from that, the back, it is pretty empty. Wait, so where’s the country of manufacturing?

In this case, it was not stated anywhere, however, reaching out to Strontium, we have learnt that the card is made in Taiwan.

The card has been rated to have up to 95MB/s for READ speed, 85MB/s for WRITE speed, and not forgetting class 10 (minimum of 10MB/s of read/write) and of course UHS-3 (for a minimum performance of 30MB/s for read/write). So how does this card really stack up? Let us find out now!

Benchmark Test

Our first test here is the h2testw:

Next, we will run the CrystalDiskMark in various capacities. The first capacity we run it on was 4000MB or 4GB. The result can be seen below:

The next test, we ran the smallest test – 50MB:

And finally, we run the middle sized test, taking the average of 5 attempts:

When compiled into a graph:

 

Overall as we can see,  the speed of the card is one of the faster we have seen though falling short of the up to 95MB/s and 85MB/s rating in many circumstances. Theoretically speaking, the card should be more than sufficient to record 4K videos easily although looking at the write graph, we aren’t too sure what is prompting a sudden decrease of speed towards the end of the test. On the other hand, random write and read is not the fastest per say, though it is pretty much similar to other cards. Nonetheless, the speeds are as follows:

READ – 81092 KB/s
WRITE – 66572 KB/s

Whilst not exactly the fastest available, it does offer some credible value and option to those looking to get a card conveniently, considering that this is even sold in Giant Supermarkets. Backed with lifetime warranty, you can take a look at this card, especially for use for data transfer or recording photos or videos. However, if you are looking to use it for use for mobile uses, such as on the mobile phone or on as a OS/program installation medium, you might want to consider other cards with better random performance.

Note: A review sample was provided for the purpose of the test here.

We will be continuing on this review with the given USB 2.0 microSD to USB adapter at a later date.