Raspberry Pi has finally announced its line of Raspberry Pi microSD cards, available in 32GB, 64 and 128GB sizes. These cards have been designed specifically for Raspberry Pi devices, with an A2 rating to make the most of the Pi 5’s capabilities.
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Official Raspberry Pi microSD Cards: Why Though?
Other than being A2 rated, the other standout feature being touted by Raspberry Pi is its support for CQHCI (Command Queueing for High Capacity Interface) and they go into a good amount of detail about this in their blog post so I won’t rehash that. TL;DR Command Queuing is good, however, you need a quality card to make the most of it and keep your data (somewhat) safe.
Support for this has been available within Raspberry Pi OS since around March this year as an opt-in dtparam, then as a default in the (then) latest rpi-firmware since August. Everything was considered stable as of the 2nd of October (so it’s available in the latest kernel available via apt) and that’s likely when they decided to start pushing the new microSD cards properly.
To quickly cover the “why though” – Raspberry Pi distributors have long been selling (often pre-loaded with the Pi OS) microSD cards from various other brands that they deemed to be reliable enough. It seems the time has come for reliable enough not being.. well, enough, and with the new kernel features coupled with improved performance on the Raspberry Pi 5 an official offering helps them to keep things in check.
Does Longsys Sound Familiar?
Raspberry Pi announced that they’d be partnering with Longsys to manufacture their own range of microSD cards and if you’re wondering “Haven’t I heard that name when it comes to microSD cards and Raspberry Pis before?” then yes, you have!
Longsys are also the manufacturer of the Amazon Basics microSD cards that have so often come out on top of my various microSD card benchmarks across most SBCs, so that bodes well. You can see my full comparison of Raspberry Pi 5 microSD Cards if you’re curious to see how that compared to what else is available on the market.
How About Pricing?
Based on what I can see in the distributor’s stores, the 32GB variant retails for around $10 USD+tax, with the 64GB around $22 USD. There are fluctuations between different currencies, and some seem to be offering them with Raspberry Pi OS pre-installed, whereas others don’t. PiShop in the US for example have the 64GB card listed at $12 USD with no OS but others in the EU look to be considerably more than that. If I can save $10 and get a blank card, I’m more than happy with that as I’m not sure if vendors are installing Raspberry Pi OS for you before shipping, or if they’ve been done in bulk and you’ll potentially get an out-of-date version.
In either case, if the 64GB card is retailing around $20 then it’s going to be extremely interesting to see how they match up against the Amazon Basics cards as they can be had in a 2-pack for around $12-15 depending on when you pick them up. They’re both Longsys, and A2 rated so let’s see!
Will I Be Testing Them?
Continuing the somewhat annoying trend (I’ve started, so I’ll finish) of having questions as headers, yes, I will be testing them and I hope to have something ready for you all in the next couple of days.
On top of my usual performance benchmarking, I’m also going to be putting them through an endurance test with a new storage test that I’ve been working on. This will include the Raspberry Pi cards, along with the Amazon Basics, and the other most popular cards I can see on Amazon/the SBC community. It’s something that lots of people have asked for over the years and I’m excited to see how the data turns out.
