Remember when the idea of having a terabyte of storage was just mind-blowing?
Now they’re packing a terabyte onto a card the size of your pinky nail.
In news that would have made teenage me’s head pop, SanDisk is now selling a 1 terabyte version of its Extreme microSD line for $450. The company first talked up these cards at Mobile World Congress back in February, but now they’re actually hitting the shelves. As Tom’s Guide spotted, it’s available on SanDisk’s site as of this morning.
Read speeds cap out at 90MB/s, while write speeds are capped at 60MB/s. SanDisk has a product page indicating that a faster ExtremePro card (170MB/s read, 90MB/s write) is on the way, but they don’t give any indication as to when.
Once upon a time, the idea of having (much less needing) a terabyte on something that fits in a tiny slot on a device in your pocket seemed funny. Then came 4K video, portable devices that can record in 4K and an ever-growing library of games with absolutely massive textures. Filling up a terabyte isn’t quite the challenge it used to be.
To anyone reading this in 2099 and laughing at our amazement at cramming a terabyte of storage onto a card this size while you’ve got a copy of every movie ever recorded stored in a strand of hair or something: you and your personal rocket ship can scram. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have a nightmare about losing a dime-sized card with a terabyte of data on it.
