Upgrade the storage in your Galaxy Note 20 Ultra with a microSD card

The regular Samsung Galaxy Note 20 left out a microSD slot, but, in comparison, the Note 20 Ultra supports microSD cards up to 1TB in size. While most of us won’t quite need that level of DOWNLOAD ALL THE THINGS storage, it’s a great idea to invest in a good microSD card so that you can store music, movies, and photos on it and leave the internal storage for more intensive files like games and apps. Here are the best microSD cards for the Note 20 Ultra, whether you need a little room or a lot.

What are the best microSD cards for the Note 20 Ultra?

When selecting a microSD card, I tend to buy a card slightly larger than I think I’ll need. So, for example, if you tend only to need a little extra space for some offline music and movies, you might be okay with a 64GB card, but I’d recommend grabbing a 128GB card like the PNY Elite-X. After all, if you run out of room, you’ll have to buy a new card and go through the hassle of transferring everything over.

Given that the Note 20 Ultra starts with 128GB of storage, the best size microSD card for the Note 20 Ultra you could get is the 256GB Samsung Evo Select. This will triple the available space and leave you plenty of room for high-quality movie downloads for long road trips — yeah, I listen to movies while I drive, it beats the pants off podcasts — and storing your entire music library if you need it. You’ll also be able to hold months and months of photos and videos on the Evo Select. However, it’s important to note that Samsung still saves Burst photos and Super Slow-Mo videos to internal storage regardless of how fast a microSD card you have inserted.

What all those symbols on a microSD card mean — and why they don’t always matter

Manufacturers cover every centimeter of a microSD card in classifications and certifications as if it were some miniature race car. Still, I’m here to tell you that most of these symbols don’t mean much (if anything). The ones that matter most on a microSD card are the values below, and they all measure the same thing: write speed.

• Video Speed Class: Indicated by a stylized V followed by numbers from 6 to 90, this class is one of the newer classification systems and was developed specifically for shooting ultra-high-definition video. V30 starts at 30MB/s write speed, V60 starts at 60MB/s write speed, and V90 starts at 90MB/s, but unless your phone somehow shoots 8K video, you probably don’t need a V90 card.
• UHS Speed Class: Indicated by a 1, 2, or 3 inside a U, this class is still used on most cards today. U1 starts at 10MB/s write speed, U3 starts at 30MB/s write speed, and both are perfectly adequate for most Android phones.
• Speed Class: Indicated by a number inside of a C, this was the original classification system for SD cards. Class 10 was as high as this class went, 10 MB/s write speed, and practically every card worth buying today is well beyond this speed at this point, so it’s not as helpful an indicator of power/quality these days.

Another important note: read speed is almost always faster than write speed, so if you see a card that only mentions “transfer speed” of 100 MB/s but is a V30 card, we can infer that the read speed is 100 MB/s and the write speed is at least 30 MB/s.

It’s essential to look beyond the symbols in a microSD card. For example, some V60 cards have a listed write speed of 80 MB/s, and there are some V30 cards out there with 90 MB/s write speeds. So read the specs!