Raspberry launches microSD cards optimized for its boards

Raspberry Pi owners will be more than familiar with the fact that not all brands and microSD cards provide the same performance. Also that many times you have to be thrifty with accessories to compensate for prices that are no longer those of yesteryear, which brings us back to the first point. To solve this dilemma, Raspberry has decided market your own microSD cards 32, 64 and 128 GB.

According to the company, the decision to launch its own range of microSD cards is due to the observation that most economical models on the market theoretically certified as A2 do not have a satisfactory implementation of the Command Queuing Host Controller Interface (CQHCI), not issuing a power disconnection notification and providing less speed than theoretically possible .

According to Raspberry’s analysis, brands like SanDisk, “particularly the Extreme and Extreme Pro product lines” perform well, but this is not the case for many others. analyzed during all these years. Manufactured by Longsys, the new microSD launched by Raspberry are Class A2 cards with all the features of the standard and a proper implementation of the function command queuing.

For the rest, Raspberry claims that its microSD cards withstand more than 100,000 surprise power cycles under a “heavy” I/O load, which is not something that some generic cards can withstand.

Looking at the wallet, which is what is really important for many users, the Raspberry microSD cards (12.60 euros for the 64 GB model in Kubii) are comparable to an equivalent SanDisk (13.5 euros), and although they are not comparable to models from unknown brands, which are often a popular choice due to their low price, they can be a competitive option.

In order to take advantage of the full speed that the Application Performance Class A2 standard allows (whether with Raspberry cards or any other brand) it will be necessary to use the most recent version of Raspberry Pi OS or install the latest updates.