Time to reformat the old wallet and embiggen your smartmobe: The 1TB microSD is here

As of today, you can now buy a 1TB micro flash card to store massive amounts of pictures and videos on your camera or mobile phone – though it'll set you back a not inconsiderable $449.

SanDisk has said its Extreme 1TB microSD card is shipping to customers after being announced in February.

The Extreme 1TB card retails for $449 ($0.45/GB) on Sandisk's site, with a 512GB version costing $199 ($0.39/GB) – no discount for quantity here.

The thing has been selling for £453.99 on Amazon's UK website since this morning – though there was only one left at the time of publication.

MicroSDXC cards are fingernail-sized and fit any device with a microSDXC slot – so you can slip 'em into digital cameras, drones, tablets and notebook computers as well as your smartmobe.

The card can do sequential reads and writes at up to 160MB/sec and 90MB/sec.

It has an A2 application performance class, meaning it meets minimum IO standards of 4,000 random read IOPS, 2,000 random write IOPS and can sustain sequential writes at 10MB/sec. The previous A1 Standard specified 1,500/500 random read/write IOPS and the same 10MB/sec bandwidth.

As for Micron's c200 1TB microSDXC card (PDF) – which was announced at massive trade show Mobile World Congress at the same time as SanDisk's – there is as yet no sign. This card has an SLC cache and up to 100 MB/sec reads and 95 MB/sec write performance. The firm hasn't been more specific than to say that it should be available in Q2 of 2019 – so before the end of next month.

Samsung has also promised a 1TB Pro microSDXC card is coming. It currently has 512GB EVO Select and EVO Plus cards available for $99.99 and $102.90 respectively on Amazon.

The Milpitas-headquartered SanDisk has other microSD card brands. The High-Endurance microSDXC card has a 256GB to 32GB capacity range, and 100MB/sec read speeds with 40MB/sec writes. There are ExtremePro models, with a 32GB to 400GB capacity range and faster transfer speeds; up to 90MB/sec writes and 170MB/sec reads, slightly faster reads than the Extreme card.

Its Extreme Plus range supports video speeds of C10, U3 and V30. It spans 128GB to 32GB capacities and up to 100/90MB/sec read/write speeds, supporting video speeds of C10, U3 and V30.

If 1TB is not enough, you can look forward to 1.5TB cards next year with 128-layer 3D NAND coming. ®