Patriot EP Series Micro SD Card (32 GB) Review

TECHNOLOGY X TESTING PROTOCOL

At Technology X, we test our storage devices slightly different depending upon the device’s marketed purpose.  Our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide, however CPU C State alteration may or may not have occurred depending on the motherboard and BIOS configurations. Benchmarks for our tests are that of fresh devices, so that we can verify that the manufacturer’s specifications match the device. Additionally, we also try to include links to the benchmarks used in our report so that you as the reader can replicate our tests to confirm that your device is top-notch.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchase; our appreciation goes to the below mentioned manufacturers for their support in our project. All of the components we use for testing and evaluation can be easily purchased at a relatively affordable price. The links provided below can assist in pricing, as well as availability for those of you who may find interest in our equipment.

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software used for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of Piriform Speccy, ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal DiskMark, and Quickbench.  In consumer reports, we prefer to test with easily accessible software that the consumer can obtain, and in many cases, we even provide links. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.

PIRIFORM SPECCY

Piriform Speccy is a great tool for checking the status and health of your computer system. It provides you with brief summary, or a detailed look, at your operating system, CPU, RAM, motherboard, graphics, storage, optical drives, audio, peripherals and network.

Speccy shows us that the Patriot Micro SD card has a total capacity of 32 GB, yet the actual amount of usable storage is 29.9 GB. Since the capacity is less than 64 GB, we can see that the file format is FAT32, above 64GB and we would see exFAT.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 2.47

ATTO Disk Benchmark is a relatively easy-to-use benchmark tool, which happens to be the benchmark of choice for many manufacturers. ATTO uses compressible data rather than random data, which results in higher performance and thus, higher benchmark scores. In our testing, we have selected the transfer size to range from 0.5KB to 8192KB, and have set the total length of the test to be 256MB.

Our first benchmark test looks at the performance of the SD card using compressible data, where we can see that the read speeds reached up to 94 MB/s and the write speeds reached 42 MB/s. We’re off to a great start, we immediately see the Patriot Micro SD is exceeding the listed 90 MB/s read speeds. The write speeds are a bit shy of the listed 45 MB/s, however this is only by a few points and is not alarming at this stage of testing.

You might also notice that performance isn’t really shown until we reach 64K file size and then it hits home. This is similar with all SD cards.  Unlike the typical system SSD, SD cards are not used for the storage, execution and saving of smaller system files.  SD cards are built for larger media files such as photography and video, these files being highly incompressible in their makeup and ideal for the Professional.

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0.3 x64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is visually straightforward, and is used for measuring the speeds at which your storage device reads and writes in both compressible (oFill/1Fill) and random, mostly incompressible, data. Random data is more consistent with everyday use of a computer, such as transferring videos, pictures and music. We run the benchmark twice, using oFill data first (left), and then proceeding to test with random data (right).

As you can see, both tests returned with nearly identical results, this allows us to the see the great consistency of this Micro SD card. The Patriot Micro SD card actually improves from it’s previous performance with ATTO. The read speeds are again exceeding the listed read performance, and the write speeds are hit their mark spot on.

QUICKBENCH VER. 4.0

QuickBench is another benchmark tool used to measure the transfer speeds and performance of storage devices. QuickBench is a good tool for confirming the previously produced read and write speeds seen above.

Our testing protocol has proven over and over again that testing with various benchmarks allow us to see the flash module from different perspectives and in this case the theory holds true once again. With Quickbench the read speeds are hitting their listed mark of 90 MB/s, but we do see our write speeds dropping slightly at the 20 and 40 MB transfer size. This is alright though, because looking at our test average we see that UHS 3 kick in, as the Patriot Micro SD card has an average write speed of 34 MB/s.