Switch 2 SD Express micro SD cards found in Gamestop database

The Switch 2's new storage spec could vastly outpace the speeds of the current model, offering faster data transfer speeds with blazing-fast SSD-like performance.

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Even more evidence has surfaced to suggest that the Switch 2 will use the newer micro SD Express format for its external storage support. Leaked Gamestop database info, which may or may not be real, reportedly show three separate SKUs for Switch 2 micro SD Express cards.

The current Switch only supports micro SD card speeds of up to UHS-I, which delivers around ~100MB/sec. The newer SD Express spec, on the other hand, can support speeds of up to 983 MB/sec. SD Express has a speed boost of +880% over the current-gen Switch's storage support.

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What's most interesting about the listing is that there aren't any 512GB SD Express micro SD cards on the market just yet. That being said, the technology may not be that expensive as SanDisk is currently selling a 256GB SD Express micro SD card with 880MB/sec reads for just $39.99. It's believed that Samsung and SanDisk could both reveal new SD Express cards around the same time as the Switch 2's reveal.

Newer, faster storage might also be necessary for new Nintendo Switch 2 games, or at least help out with asset/content streaming where applicable.

Samsung details its 256GB SD Express microSD cards in a press release from earlier this year:

Thanks to its low-power design as well as firmware technology optimized for high-performance and thermal management, Samsung's SD Express microSD card offers performance equivalent to SSDs in a small form factor.

While read speeds for traditional microSD cards based on the UHS-1 interface were limited to 104MB/s, SD Express was able to boost it to 985MB/s, although commercial availability of the latter were not viable in microSD cards until now.

The sequential read speed of Samsung's SD Express microSD card reaches up to 800MB/s - 1.4 times faster than SATA SSDs (up to 560 MB/s) and more than four times faster compared to traditional UHS-1 memory cards (up to 200 MB/s).

Check out the benefits of micro SD Express below: