The best microSD cards for the Nintendo Switch 2 in 2026
Expanding your Switch 2's storage is a bit simpler than you might think.
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If your Nintendo Switch 2 is running low on storage space, it’s probably time to buy a microSD Express card. These are not the same as the standard microSD cards you may have bought over the years: They’re newer, faster and, most of the time, more expensive. But they’re the only choice you’ve got.
Which one to buy, though? We’ve tested several contenders to find the best microSD Express card for the Switch 2 right now. The answer might be a little simpler than you think. Here’s our breakdown of what to know before you buy.
Best microSD Express cards for the Switch 2
The reality with the Switch 2 is that any microSD Express card should work well. But if we had to pick one card to recommend broadly, we’d go with the Lexar Play Pro. It’s neither the absolute fastest card we’ve tested nor the most affordable, but it sat at or near the top in most of our benchmarks, with no major outliers, and it’s priced in line with most options on the market. It’s made by a known brand and comes with a lifetime limited warranty, plus it’s easy to buy at several reputable retailers as of this writing (which isn’t a given in today’s storage market). It’s also one of the handful of Express cards available with a 1TB capacity, alongside the usual 256GB and 512GB.
- Fast
- Available up to 1TB
- Lifetime limited warranty
- There are usually more affordable options
If you just want to pay as little as possible, the microSD Express Card from Walmart’s in-house electronics brand Onn is also worth a look. It’s significantly less expensive than most other Express cards, with the 512GB model a particularly strong value at $85 as of this writing. That’s $15 to $25 cheaper than the Play Pro and other budget-minded models from Samsung and GameStop.
We hesitate to make the Onn our top overall pick for a couple of reasons. One,, it’s a bit slower than the Play Pro and most of the other cards we’ve tested. The drop-off typically isn’t significant, but you can lose a few seconds here and there with some demanding loads compared to a card like the Lexar Play Pro. It also took about two minutes longer to move Cyberpunk to and from the Switch 2’s internal storage. (More on this below.)
The other potential issue is that this is a rebranded card from a separate manufacturer. It’s reportedly made by Longsys, the parent company of Lexar, so it should be reliable in the long term. But there’s always an inkling of doubt when buying binned or “reject” models like this, and Walmart only gives the card a one-year warranty. To be clear, this is mostly speculation — we’ve used the Onn card for months without any major issues, and we haven’t seen widespread reports of failures since the card was released last year. But it’s enough to keep us from giving a full-throated recommendation.
- Most affordable microSD Express card we've tested
- Quick enough performance within Switch 2 games
- Rebadged model with only a one-year warranty
- A bit slower than most other options, especially when transferring games
Jeff Dunn/Yahoo
The PNY microSD Express Flash Memory Card is available in capacities up to 1TB and priced similarly to the Play Pro. It ever-so-slightly topped the Lexar model in a handful of benchmarks as well. Namely, it’s the fastest card we’ve used when it came to moving games from the card to the Switch 2’s internal storage, averaging 3:40 to transfer Mario Kart World and 10:34 to move Cyberpunk 2077. (The Play Pro took 3:52 and 11:04, respectively.) That suggests it has impressive sequential read speeds.
But it’s also the slowest card we’ve tried when doing the inverse: Writing Mario Kart to the card took 7:11 compared to the Play Pro’s 4:33, while Cyberpunk took 21:21 compared to 13:30. Still, it’s about as quick as anything else we’ve used in-game. So it’s fine to buy if you see it on sale for less than the Play Pro and can live with that one game transferring caveat.
- Ranked near the top in most benchmark tests
- Available up to 1TB
- Lifetime limited warranty
- Slowest model we've tested for moving large games to the card, which suggests middling sustained write speeds
The main thing to know about microSD Express cards and the Nintendo Switch 2
As we alluded to above, every card we’ve tested performs well enough on the Switch 2 —- the truth is, you can’t really go wrong no matter which one you pick. We’ve put seven cards through a range of benchmark tests, and while the results haven’t been entirely identical, any performance gap within actual Switch 2 games has usually been difficult to notice.
All seven cards took between 18 and 20 seconds to load Mario Kart World, for instance. Each then took six or seven (ugh) seconds to load that game’s first Grand Prix race. For Cyberpunk 2077, one of the console’s most technically demanding games, each took 38 or 39 seconds to reach the start screen.
For the Switch 2 upgrade of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (using a Switch 1 cartridge), each model needed just over six seconds to load to the start screen, 19 to 20 seconds to load a save just before the final boss fight, about 16 seconds to fast travel between two common areas and so on. With Fast Fusion, a smaller racing game, all of the cards took six or seven seconds to complete the initial load, then about four seconds to load the first championship race after selecting it from the main menus.
There are two instances where you might feel a speed difference, however. One is certain in-game loads with especially taxing games like Cyberpunk. A few of the tests we ran there involved loading into a particularly asset-heavy area — for those, the difference between the absolute fastest performers (from SanDisk and PNY) and the slowest (Walmart’s Onn card) was about five to six seconds on average. The latter was still far from unusable, and it fell within a second of its peers in most of our other benchmarks. But the difference between these things isn’t always negligible if you push them hard enough.
The second, and more obvious to the naked eye, involves downloading full games onto a card or transferring them from the card to the Switch 2’s internal storage. This can stress each model’s sustained write and read speeds and it’s where we saw the most varied results in testing. That said, you probably won’t spend a ton of time moving games between storage locations on your Switch.
One other thing to note: No microSD Express card has been quite as fast as the Switch 2’s built-in storage. If you want the absolute best performance from a given game, we recommend downloading it directly to the console.
The most important thing here is getting lots of space to hold games at a price you can live with. So while we have a couple of blanket recommendations, you should feel free to buy a different card from a reputable brand if you see it for a lower price in the size you want.
Other microSD Express cards we’ve tested
The SanDisk microSD Express Card is up there with the Lexar and PNY models in terms of raw speed, but it’s far more expensive as of this writing.
The Samsung microSD Express Card for Nintendo Switch 2 is a solid card that we’ve seen on sale a few times, but it’s only available in a 256GB capacity.
The Samsung P9 Express and GameStop Express microSD Card for Nintendo Switch 2 are fine budget models, though there isn’t much reason to grab either over the usually-cheaper Onn unless you see them for the same price, or if Walmart’s card is out of stock. The GameStop card does come in a 1TB capacity, though it’s another rebadged model.
We aim to test a few more microSD Express cards from TeamGroup, ADATA, Next and others for a future update.
How I test microSD Express cards on the Switch 2
I put each microSD Express card through a series of tests that are meant to simulate how someone might use a card on the Switch 2 in the real world. I mostly tested with four games: Mario Kart World, a mid-sized file (21.9GB); Cyberpunk 2077, a large one (60.5GB); Fast Fusion, a smaller title (3.8GB); and the Switch 2 version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, a “hybrid” that I ran off its original Switch cartridge but uses a 10GB digital upgrade pack.
From there, I timed how long it took to move each game from the console’s internal storage to the card and vice versa, how long it took to load each game when installed and how quickly the cards could load various in-game scenarios. These included the first Grand Prix race in Mario Kart, the first championship race in Fast Fusion and fast traveling between various asset-heavy areas in both Cyberpunk and Zelda. In the latter two, I also timed how long it took to load different save files in those more taxing locales.
I completed three to five runs for each test, then used the average time between them. I did each test in airplane mode to minimize any performance drops from background downloads. I also used each card casually with different games for at least an hour, just to ensure there were no major performance drops with everyday use.
I didn’t spend much time running each card through traditional benchmark tests on a PC; the Switch 2 is the only major device that actually supports the microSD Express standard right now, so there’s no real reason to buy any of these cards for anything else.
MicroSD Express card FAQs
What is microSD Express?
It’s a relatively new standard for microSD cards that supports faster transfer rates. Most traditional microSD cards have used a standard called UHS-I, which supports a theoretical maximum transfer speed of 104 megabytes per second (MB/s). (Some UHS-I cards can go higher with proprietary card readers, and there are other versions of UHS, but we’re keeping things simple here.) UHS-I is the standard supported by most devices with a microSD slot, including the original Switch, and it’s long been enough for most needs.
The Switch 2 is a more modern gaming handheld that wants to run graphically demanding games, however, so it needs better performance from any external storage solution. MicroSD Express cards provide that: They tap into the same underlying tech used by solid state drives (SSDs) — the kind of faster storage used by laptops, desktop PCs and other game consoles like the PlayStation 5 — and thus can provide significantly quicker transfer rates, with a theoretical maximum of 985 MB/s.
These cards are never that fast in reality, and they still fall well short of normal SSDs, but they’re a marked improvement over standard microSD cards and enough to meet the console’s power demands. By using microSD Express, you’re able to add more storage to the Switch 2 without sacrificing much in the way of load times and overall performance.
How do I know if I have a microSD Express card?
Look for a little “EX” logo on the card’s front. Remember that you want the microSD Express standard, not “Extreme,” which a branding SanDisk has used for some older cards.
Does the Switch 2 support normal microSD cards?
For the most part, no. You can use a traditional UHS-I microSD card to view screenshots and videos from your Switch 1, but that’s it. For everything else, you need an Express card.
Are microSD Express cards backwards compatible with the original Switch?
You can technically insert a microSD Express card into a Switch 1, or any other standard microSD reader, but it’ll revert to slower UHS-I speeds. So you’d be neutering any advantage it has over a normal microSD card in those scenarios. A general rule of thumb: Any microSD card is only as fast as the slowest link in the chain — if a host device doesn’t support a given speed standard, you won’t be able to utilize it to its fullest extent.
Do microSD Express cards cost more than normal microSD cards?
Normally, yes. It’s a newer, faster technology for a smaller overall market. That said, with the AI boom driving storage and memory prices through the roof in recent months, it’s not impossible to find some older microSD cards retail around the same price as an Express model, if not higher.
Storage manufacturers like Micron and Samsung are generally prioritizing the demands of data centers and other high-profit, AI-minded enterprise customers over ordinary consumers. This has led to a chip shortage for consumer products like microSD cards and made pricing extremely volatile for anything reliant on NAND flash memory. Exactly all of this will subside is anyone’s guess, but it could take years.
What’s the most space I can get from a microSD Express card right now?
Nintendo says the Switch 2 can technically support Express cards up to 2TB, but the most spacious models we’ve seen in the wild as of this writing are 1TB.
