Samsung 128GB EVO Plus microSDXC UHS-I U3 100MB/s Full HD & 4K UHD Memory Card with Adapter (MB-MC128GA, 2021)

I want to start out my review by saying that I really put some time in researching exactly what memory card I should go with for my phone. I knew that I wanted the 128GB card because my Samsung Galaxy Note 4 eats up memory fast with the amount of pictures that I take and apps that I use. I read tons of Amazon reviews on the different brands and saw the data people pulled on how much memory the cards actually had and how fast they actually were. I learned that if you buy the cheaper product you will get a cheaper product and that I should pay a few extra bucks and buy the Samsung card. So I saved up a little bit of money and bought this card and waited for it to come in the mail. I was really excited because my old memory card was full and I was eating away into my device memory and that is something that I really don’t want to do. When I got it in the mail I unmounted my SD card and inserted the new one. Nothing happened. The mount SD card slot stayed grey and after I restarted my phone twice with no changes I Googled the issue. I found out that I should try putting it into my computer and maybe my computer will format it so my phone can use it. I used the adapter that came with the card and nothing happened when I put it in the computer. The computer was not recognizing it. I then tried my husband’s laptop and no result. Then I thought that it could be a bad adapter and I used one of my own and still no result. I then used my old memory card with the new adapter and both my computer and my husband’s laptop could sense the old card. At this point I was fuming because I spent extra money on a memory card that did not even work. I went through the process of returning the card as defective, send it off in the mail and a day later I received my refund. I bought another of the same card. I hoped that the one I got before was just a dud. When I opened the card this time I decided to put it in my computer first so I would not have to go through the hassle of taking my Otterbox off if the thing did not work. The memory card worked this time though and I soon put it in my phone and it instantly read and now it shows that I have 120GB of memory available. I am happy that the memory card works and I cannot take away any stars because the item is as it says but I just want you to know that I did get a dud the first time and a jewel the second.

I run a lot of odd live OS setups at times, and it's always been an easy way to really see how an SD card or thumb drive performs under pressure. Comparing this to the Evo Select, it's not even close. This thing performs about as well as a cheap thumb drive, and the Evo Select is more like an old floppy disk.A cheap thumb drive, what a nice compliment, right? Well, for an SD card, that's actually very good. SD cards are not the same, the controllers are very different, and this usually is very bad for speed on SD cards. For an SD card to be able to run a live OS reasonably well is a very welcome thing, and this card pulls it off.So what does this mean for "normal" people that just intend to put it in their phones, use it for their cameras, etc? On a phone, this means your apps can actually realistically be moved to an SD card without much of a performance penalty. Time between taking photos is quicker. Transferring music can take much less time. And for a card that is still one of the cheapest available at this capacity, this is quite positive.There are better cards, but this is right at the sweet spot of the "price to performance" ratio. If you are deciding if this is worth the extra buck or two over the Evo Select, absolutely. This is quite a good card for the money.

I've always been a little cynical when it comes to claims of speed and performance boosts, from generation to generation. Most of it seems like marketing buzz trying to hype up marginal boost in performance. In this case, I think Samsung's claims hold true, after testing this out on several of my phone handsets and in a few large transfers. ProCapture on my phone seems able to save photos almost twice as fast on my various handsets, and there's a definite increase in speeds when transferring large 7ZIP archive files. The biggest performance increase seems to be in transferring back-and-forth large quantities of smaller files, when compared to my older cards. The difference between the Plus Class 10 and the regular Class 10 cards is modest, but it clowns the Class 4 and Class 6 cards in transfer speeds. If there were a huge difference in price between the Class 10 and the 10+, I probably would stick with the regular Class 10. However, in the case of Samsung's lineup, the prices are very similar. In the case of the 16GB, the 10+ is sometimes cheaper. As such, I'm sticking exclusively with Samsung's EVO Plus Class 10 cards, until the next generation cards prove themselves.

Like the card but man that packaging was insane to open. It works as advertised, decent speeds and all that, my biggest gripe was the package. These things are so small I didn't want to bust out my knife to open for fear one small slip and I don't even have a paperweight. I've found un-boxing a child toy to sometimes be easier than this thing was to open (if you have kids you know how insane those are to open). Just when I thought i got to the plastic there was more to tear away so that I can open the plastic.I'm not docking stars for the packaging, although I was very tempted to, the reality is it's a great card and performs well. Looks nice, doesn't feel cheap and holds a lot of data. I'm combining this with a BaseQi adapter for my Surface Book and they work great.Just come on Samsung - rethink that packaging.