Patriot Memory LX 200GB microSD Memory Card Review

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A number of high capacity microSD solution have come into the market over the last few months. Unfortunately, not all of them hit as affordable for the large majority of consumers. With that said, Patriot has brought forth their LX lineup, adding in a 200GB capacity that I have in the lab today.

The LX series from Patriot is their affordable or mainstream general purpose lineup of flash solutions. These drives cover both microSD and SD with capacities ranging from 32GB to 200GB with the latter on the bench for testing.

The LX comes to us with both UHS-I and Class 10 ratings topped with marketing performance suggesting 90 MB/s reads while being targeted towards HD Camcorders and mid-range cameras. The MSRP of the 200GB Patriot LX MicroSD comes in at $84.99 with a two-year warranty.

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The packaging is standard with the drive and its adapter in the center. Marketing surrounds with its class ratings below and capacity at the top.

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On the back side, we find more information about the drive in several languages.

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The scope of delivery includes the card and SD adapter all put together in a plastic shell to keep them safe.

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The LX series is a no-frills solution, with a rather blank canvas with branding and capacity.

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Over the years, I have had plenty of microSD cards come through and the LX managed to do quite well comparatively at 90 MB/s read. Write performance, however, was rather abysmal, touching just 21 MB/s.

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With the write performance being so low for the LX, I was quite surprised after taking all of the averages and the pricing into consideration, that this card came out as one of the better solutions tested - undoubtedly due to its cost-friendly approach.

For those in the market for a high capacity microSD memory card, the Patriot LX may be the cheapest you're going to find a 200GB solution for, at least for the time being. SanDisk does offer its Ultra 200GB solution at a similar price point of $79.99, providing similar levels of performance. With that said, the LX is a solid memory card, and I haven't had any issues come up while using the card for the last few weeks. It works every time with my Davinci 1.0a and my Mobius HD ActionCam, although I will say it does struggle at times with full frame 1080p60 video.

The synthetic performance was acceptable enough to get this card ranked in the top three in price to performance and good enough to reach 90 MB/s read in sequential testing. Write performance hit just 21 MB/s, and while I would have loved to see it do a bit better than that, it is plenty for 720p video and even 1080p using the right encoding.

Overall, the budget-minded consumer will love this card, as it offers a similar price point and performance to the SanDisk Ultra 200GB solution, lining things up for price wars over the next few months - which is only good for consumers in the end.

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Z170 Premium - Buy from Amazon
• CPU: Intel Core i5 6500 - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Noctua NH-U12S - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Memory: Klevv CRAS 16GB (4x4) DDR4 3000 - Read our review
• Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• OS Storage: Intel 730 480GB SSD - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Secondary Storage: Intel 750 400GB U.2 SSD - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Case: Thermaltake P5 - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Power Supply: Thermaltake Toughpower Grand 1200 - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 - Buy from Amazon