Adata has unveiled what it claims is the industry's first SD Express 8.0 compliant card, boasting read and write speeds of 1.6 GB/s and 1.2 GB/s, respectively. These numbers are up to twelve times faster than existing UHS-1 solutions, four times the speed of UHS-II, and even beat out several entry-level NVMe SSDs. The Premier Extreme SD 8.0 Express memory card will debut with a single 512GB storage option, but we're likely to see higher-capacity offerings spring up as the technology and market matures.
The SD Express technology was introduced back in 2018, with the SD 7.0 standard. However, we're only seeing these superfast cards become a reality now, in 2025, largely due to the Nintendo Switch 2. SD Express cards function a lot like the SSDs in your PC/PS5/Xbox, utilizing PCIe lanes and the NVMe protocol. Even entry-level SD Express cards are rated for a theoretical maximum bus speed of 985 MB/s (PCIe 3.1 x1). This number gets progressively higher, with PCIe 4.0 x2-based cards capable of hitting 4 GB/s under the SD 8.0 standard.
