SanDisk will soon offer the world's fastest 256GB microSDXC card, priced at $200

Despite briefly falling out of fashion with Samsung flagships in 2015, microSD remains a great choice for those looking to expand the available storage on their mobile devices without having to swap their existing phone or tablet for a new one. In recent years we’ve not only seen the pricing for microSD cards drop steadily, but the the available sizes have increased significantly, with capacities as large as 256GB now readily available.

Now SanDisk is looking to go a step further by upping the speeds available to 256GB cards as well. Today SanDisk unveiled its new 256GB Extreme MicroSDXC UHS-I card, which offers transfer speeds up to 100MB/s and write speeds up to 90MB/s. This makes for the world’s fastest 256GB card, though it’s not the fastest microSD card in existence. For example, Lexar offers an 128GB card with a 270 MB/s read and 100MB/s write speed.

The price for the SanDisk Extreme is set at $199.99 and launch sometime in Q4 of this year. For those looking to save a little money, SanDisk will also offer the 256GB Ultra Premium Edition this August for $149.99. This card has the same storage capacity as its speedier brother, but has slightly slower transfer speeds of up to 90MB/s, with a write speed that is currently unspecified.

256GB sounds like a lot of space, but in a world where recording 4K videos on mobile is now a thing, it could prove useful to own a large capacity card that also happens to have a fast transfer speed.