The Samsung PRO is new for 2014. It is the highest level of Samsung's SD card line, now consisting of PRO, EVO and Standard. The new PRO is not to be confused with the earlier Pro Series cards which were grey plastic with a brused metal label. The new PRO cards are made of white plastic with a mirror silver label. The old Pro Series were rated at 80MB/s read and 40MB/s write. The new PRO is advertised as 90 MB/s read and 80 MB/s write.
According to Samsung, the PRO is for professional photographers. With high performance and competitive pricing the PRO cards should appeal to enthusiasts as well. The PRO is vailable in 16, 32 and 64 GB capacities. It is rated UHS-I Grade 1, Class 10 performance. We test the real world performance of this card in a variety of cameras and card readers.
What's inside? The PRO series features Samsung's NAND flash MLC memory. Multi-Level Cell (MLC) stores two bits per physical memory cell. The EVO and Standard series use Triple Level Cell (TLC) flash which stores eight bits per cell. TLC is less expensive to produce because it uses less material. MLC is more expensive and requires more raw material, but results in higher read and write speed as well as a longer lifespan (in write cycles). However both types of memory are capable of thousands of write cycles and should not be an issue for photographic use.
We subjected the PRO to a variety of tesets. Beginning with benchmarks which show its maximum read and write speeds in various card readers. It performed very well and surpassed its stated speed ratings. In our fastest card readers, the PRO reached 95 MB/s sequential read. Sequential write speed reached a maximum 83 MB/s.
Card: Samsung PRO 32GB
Benchmark: CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64
Program settings: 1000 MB, 5 passes, random test data
Operating system: Windows 10 Pro
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.40GHz
RAM: 32GB DDR3 1600
Samsung PRO 32GB Card Reader Benchmarks | Seq. Read 1000MB MB/s | Seq. Write 1000MB MB/s | Rand. Read 512KB MB/s | Rand. Write 512KB MB/s | Rand. Read 4KB MB/s QD1 | Rand. Read 4KB IOPS QD1 | Rand. Write 4KB MB/s QD1 | Rand. Write 4KB IOPS QD1 | Rand. Read 4KB MB/s QD32 | Rand. Read 4KB IOPS QD32 | Rand. Write 4KB MB/s QD32 | Rand. Write 4KB IOPS QD32 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Lexar LRWM04U-7000 UHS-II Reader | 95.962 | 82.767 | 84.968 | 2.182 | 8.111 | 1980.2 | 0.781 | 190.6 | 8.842 | 2158.8 | 0.908 | 221.6 |
Lexar Professional Workflow SR2 UHS-II | 95.848 | 82.364 | 83.914 | 1.952 | 7.940 | 1938.6 | 1.849 | 451.3 | 9.148 | 2233.5 | 0.855 | 208.7 |
SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-II SD Reader/Writer | 95.334 | 81.824 | 84.786 | 1.781 | 8.111 | 1980.2 | 1.878 | 458.6 | 9.412 | 2297.8 | 1.033 | 252.2 |
Kingston MobileLite G4 UHS-II | 95.143 | 82.708 | 84.926 | 1.786 | 8.096 | 1976.6 | 1.850 | 451.6 | 9.434 | 2303.1 | 0.815 | 199.0 |
Lexar Professional Dual Slot UHS-II Card Reader | 94.799 | 81.323 | 84.493 | 1.955 | 7.960 | 1943.4 | 1.777 | 433.7 | 9.310 | 2272.9 | 0.915 | 223.4 |
Transcend Multi-Card Reader RDF9 | 94.782 | 81.140 | 84.271 | 2.092 | 7.906 | 1930.3 | 1.836 | 448.3 | 9.337 | 2279.6 | 1.006 | 245.6 |
Delkin Dual Slot SD UHS-II and CF Card Reader | 94.560 | 81.411 | 84.202 | 1.695 | 7.986 | 1949.6 | 1.844 | 450.2 | 9.336 | 2279.3 | 0.848 | 207.0 |
Delkin Travel Reader | 94.551 | 81.882 | 81.920 | 2.056 | 7.923 | 1934.4 | 1.910 | 466.4 | 9.476 | 2313.4 | 0.906 | 221.1 |
Lexar Professional Workflow SR1 | 94.390 | 82.957 | 81.527 | 1.624 | 7.651 | 1867.9 | 1.889 | 461.1 | 8.648 | 2111.4 | 0.837 | 204.2 |
Kingston FCR-HS4 Card Reader | 94.279 | 82.248 | 83.984 | 1.617 | 7.950 | 1940.8 | 1.850 | 451.6 | 9.339 | 2280.1 | 0.938 | 229.1 |
Transcend SD Card Reader RDF5 Black | 94.195 | 82.507 | 81.446 | 1.625 | 6.297 | 1537.4 | 1.675 | 409.0 | 6.587 | 1608.2 | 1.007 | 245.9 |
Lexar Professional Dual Slot Reader | 93.614 | 83.286 | 81.798 | 1.777 | 7.792 | 1902.2 | 1.930 | 471.2 | 8.813 | 2151.6 | 0.937 | 228.7 |
SanDisk ImageMate All-In-One USB 3.0 | 93.606 | 82.170 | 76.097 | 1.861 | 4.906 | 1197.8 | 1.477 | 360.7 | 5.068 | 1237.2 | 1.301 | 317.6 |
Transcend Multi-Card Reader RDF8 Black | 93.464 | 83.075 | 81.703 | 1.623 | 7.808 | 1906.3 | 1.828 | 446.3 | 8.887 | 2169.7 | 0.825 | 201.4 |
Delkin Universal Memory Card Reader | 92.394 | 81.728 | 81.379 | 1.560 | 7.588 | 1852.5 | 1.742 | 425.2 | 8.774 | 2142.0 | 0.880 | 214.9 |
Sony MRW-E90 XQD 2.0 / SD UHS-II Card Reader | 91.595 | 80.493 | 79.832 | 1.990 | 7.527 | 1837.5 | 1.692 | 413.0 | 8.811 | 2151.1 | 0.998 | 243.6 |
Kingston Multi-Card Reader FCR-HS3 | 91.101 | 77.609 | 59.997 | 1.762 | 8.057 | 1967.1 | 1.929 | 471.1 | 9.417 | 2299.2 | 0.929 | 226.7 |
We put the card to work in various digital cameras. In camera testing we found it to perform consistently among the top SD cards. It reached its highest write speeds in UHS-I cameras, where it averaged 67.4MB/s in the Nikon D330, 67.0 MB/s write speed in the Nikon D7100 and 65.6 MB/s in the Nikon D810. The Canon 7D Mark II reached 67.3 MB/s write speed. Its performance is nearly as good as much more expensive cards such as the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s UHS-I card.
Samsung PRO 32GB Tested in Camera | Write Speed (MB/s) |
---|---|
Canon 80D | 74.3 |
Nikon D500 | 73.4 |
Canon 5D Mark IV | 71.8 |
Fuji X-Pro2 | 70.8 |
Canon Rebel T6i/T6s | 69.3 |
Nikon D7200 | 68.1 |
Nikon D7100 | 67.8 |
Nikon D3300 | 67.4 |
Canon 7D Mark II | 67.3 |
Canon 5Ds | 66.7 |
Nikon D5500 | 66.5 |
Nikon D810 | 65.6 |
Nikon D750 | 63.8 |
Samsung NX1 | 54.4 |
Fuji X-T10 | 52.8 |
Nikon D5300 | 51.2 |
Nikon D600 | 43.0 |
Olympus PEN-F | 38.3 |
Nikon D800 | 37.1 |
Olympus E-M5 II | 36.7 |
Pentax K-3 II | 35.9 |
Sony A7R II | 35.3 |
Sony A6000 | 33.8 |
Sony A6300 | 33.6 |
Olympus E-M1 | 32.0 |
Olympus E-M10 | 30.8 |
Olympus E-M5 | 27.4 |
Canon 70D | 23.4 |
Canon 6D | 20.2 |
Cameras tested with this card: Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon 5Ds, Canon 6D, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon 70D, Canon 80D, Canon Rebel T6i/T6s, Fuji X-Pro2, Fuji X-T10, Nikon D500, Nikon D750, Nikon D810, Nikon D800, Nikon D600, Nikon D7200, Nikon D7100, Nikon D5500, Nikon D5300, Nikon D3300, Olympus E-M1, Olympus E-M5, Olympus E-M5 II, Olympus PEN-F, Olympus E-M10, Pentax K-3 II, Samsung NX1, Sony A7R II, Sony A6000, Sony A6300
The PRO series cards, like the EVO series, carry a 10-year warranty from Samsung. The card is marked Made in Korea on the back side.
The following table contains information encoded in the SD card.
Samsung PRO 32GB SD — Internal Card Information | |
---|---|
Serial number (PSN) | 3095792775 |
Product Name (PNM) | 00000 |
Product Revision | 1.0 |
Manufacturer ID (MID) | 0x00001b |
OEM ID (OID) | SM |
Manufacture Date (MDT) | 04/2014 |
Total capacity | 32,009,355,264 bytes |
Compare prices on the Samsung PRO SD card. The lowest prices are highlighted in the table below. Prices are updated daily.
Card | Size GB | Lowest $ / GB | Prices | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Amazon | B&H Photo | Adorama | |||
Samsung PRO SD | 16 | $0.56 | $9.00 | Check price | |
Samsung PRO SD | 32 | $2.16 | $69.00 | Check price | |
Samsung PRO SD | 64 | $1.09 | $69.50 | Check price |