Samsung PRO Plus and EVO Plus SD Card Review

A Pair Of Fast New Standard-Size SD Cards

We recently looked at Samsung’s first PCI Express 4.0 SSD with our 980 PRO review, and today we have more high performance solid-state storage from Samsung – in a very different form factor.

Arriving in the form of standard-size SD cards (their lineup before today included only microSD cards), these are the PRO Plus marketed ‘for professionals’ and EVO Plus marketed ‘for creators’.

We received the 128 GB capacity of each version, and both of these new options carry the highest SD Association SD Speed Class ratings (U3, Class 10) for minimum sequential write speed.

Both the PRO Plus and EVO Plus fall under the 4K UHD Video Speed Class with a V30 rating, and Samsung is advertising up to 90 MB/s writes from the PRO Plus, and up to 100 MB/s read speeds from both cards.

Performance Testing

Running a couple of common benchmarks to see what these SD cards are capable of, I made use of the Intel NUC 9 Extreme system we reviewed back in April, which integrates an SDXC slot supporting up to UHS-II interface cards. We only need UHS-I here, which supports up to 104 MB/s (an overview of the bus standards can be found here).

CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0 x64

First we have the results from CrystalDiskMark, run with default settings:

Left: Samsung PRO Plus; Right: Samsung EVO Plus

As you can see from the CrystalDiskMark results, the sequential read speeds we recorded with the PRO and EVO versions were identical at 97.11 MB/s at queue depth 8, and 95.85 MB/s at QD1. The separation here is obviously write speeds, which are 83.45 MB/s QD8 for the PRO Plus, 66.69 MB/s QD8 with the EVO Plus.

ATTO Disk Benchmark 4.01.0f1

Next we look at results from the ATTO Disk Benchmark, run at the default settings (QD4):

Left: Samsung PRO Plus; Right: Samsung EVO Plus

With ATTO the read speeds topped out at an identical 93.61 MB/s with the PRO and EVO versions, with write speeds reaching 82.05 MB/s with the PRO Plus and 65.27 MB/s with the EVO Plus.

SanDisk Extreme Comparison

For a point of reference I also tested a SanDisk Extreme 128GB card on hand, which offers the same Speed Class ratings (U3, Class 10, V30) as these Samsung cards. I paid around $40 for this card in early 2019, and its replacement (which claims to 150 MB/s reads) is currently selling for the same price.

The 128GB PRO Plus and EVO Plus finished on top with the 97.11 MB/s read speeds seen in the CDM results earlier, and that number was enough to edge out the SanDisk Extreme’s 95.84 MB/s result. I will note that my version of the Extreme is only rated for 90 MB/s, so it overachieves impressively here.

There is a small victory for the SanDisk Extreme 128GB in the write tests, topping out at 84.30 MB/s – about 1 MB/s faster than the 83.45 MB/s result from the PRO Plus 128GB.

I added my SanDisk Extreme 128GB card to the mix here since I use these cards in various capacities due to their excellent performance, and while my 128GB Extreme did offer slightly higher read speeds, I find this version to have been replaced by a model that advertises up to 150 MB/s reads, but lower 70 MB/s writes.

Pricing and Conclusion

An important part of the equation when comparing these new Samsung cards to options like the SanDisk Extreme we tested is, naturally, price. The PRO Plus carries a list price of $25.99 for the 128GB version we tested, with the 128GB EVO Plus at $19.99 for the same capacity.

The EVO Plus offers the same sequential read speeds, with about 20% lower sequential write speeds compared to the PRO Plus. This is reflected in the price, with the 128GB version of the EVO Plus carrying a list price of $19.99, which is 23% lower than the PRO Plus.

• Samsung PRO Plus SD Cards
  • 256GB: $49.99
  • 128GB: $25.99
  • 64GB: $16.99 (available November 8th)
  • 32GB: $9.99 (available November 8th)
• Samsung EVO Plus SD Cards
  • 256GB: $39.99
  • 128GB: $19.99
  • 64GB: $12.99
  • 32GB: $6.99

Overall, I find the value proposition from Samsung to be excellent with both the PRO and EVO Plus, considering the $25.99 / $19.99 list pricing for the 128GB models we tested, and with the highest density models providing 256GB of fast SDXC storage for list pricing of $49.99 / $39.99 for PRO/EVO.

Bottom line: Samsung has jumped back in to the full-size SD market with competitive high-end cards that offer a nice mix of performance and price.