Netac P500 64GB Micro SD: a brief look at a small memory card

Memory cards are among the most popular products bought from our online stores and from stores in China. They’re used in tablets, media players, phones, camcorders, TV boxes, and so on. So when I was offered the chance to try out a new memory card, I didn’t hesitate much—it was sure to come in handy.
So, here’s a brief look at a small memory card.

I’ve seen cards made by Netac (or at least bearing that name) featured in reviews before, but I haven’t come across a review of this model yet.

There isn’t much to say about this product, so this will probably be one of my shortest reviews :)

The memory card arrived in a standard blister pack, which is probably how most of them are sold.


The card comes in a small plastic case for protection against damage.
Unfortunately, there’s no MicroSD-to-SD adapter or case included. I wouldn’t say that’s important, but little extras like these are usually nice to have.


The card was made in Taiwan, which is a little unusual.
It looks neat and is rated UHS Speed Class 3.


There’s nothing more to describe, so let’s move on to the tests.
First, I tested the card with a regular USB 2.0 card reader that I use all the time at home. It works pretty well.


The card came formatted as exFAT. Its formatted capacity available to the user is 58.9 GB.


First, I checked it with the well-known H2testw utility.
No issues, though the speed seemed a bit low; it’s still quite a way off the USB 2.0 limit.


To test the speed, I ran one of the programs I use most often: CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3.
Still a bit low—I expected at least 30 MB/s. I tried connecting the card directly, bypassing the USB hub, but got the same result consistently.


The final test is HD Tune 2.53.
Apparently, this program tests things a little differently, since it showed a lower result than CrystalDiskMark. This wasn’t just the case with this memory card; I saw the same thing with others.


Now for a brief digression.
The memory card is marked U3, which means it complies with the UHS Speed Class 3 standard. In turn, this indicates a high write speed of at least 30 MB/s.
It turned out I didn't have a single card reader at home that supported this class. At first I thought I'd buy a suitable card reader, but looking through the options in stores didn't give me 100% confidence that the one I bought wouldn't limit the speed.

Help came unexpectedly from a place I hadn't expected. On a whim, I started testing the card in every device I could find at home, and suddenly discovered that tablets with the newer Atom processors have a high-speed card reader. That's what I mentioned in my latest review.
But knowing that it's fast wasn't enough; I wanted more information, so I started looking.
My search showed that everyone simply says there's a separate bus connected to the card reader. And only in one place did I finally find out that the card reader built into Atom x5-z8x00 processors is specified as a microSDXC v3.0 Card Slot w/ UHS-I Support.
This information comes from here.

To understand what UHS Speed Class means, I found a table showing that Class 1 means a write speed of at least 10 MB/s, while Class 3 means a write speed of at least 30 MB/s.


It's not quite what I wanted, of course, but definitely better than a USB 2.0 port.
Anyway, I repeated all the tests, this time using the tablet I wrote about in this review.
The results were noticeably better, though still not as good as I'd hoped.


Read speeds of around 85 MB/s and write speeds above 25 MB/s are much better than in the test with a USB 2.0 card reader.


As expected, HD Tune showed a lower result than CrystalDiskMark


Of course, a few isolated tests don't tell us much; we need more time. Still, while preparing this review, I rewrote the entire card well over 2–3 times and didn't notice any drop in speed. It also warmed up only slightly; an ordinary 32 GB card gets hotter (or so it seemed to me).

So even when testing with a card reader that supports only UHS Speed Class 1, I got quite decent results, almost reaching the claimed 30 MB/s, which is a good result.

I don't see any point in listing the pros and cons. In my opinion, the card has decent specs, and only time will tell how reliable it is.
This card should work well for recording video and then transferring it to a computer for editing, as well as expanding the flash storage of tablets and mini PCs based on Atom x5-z8x00 processors.

I'd really appreciate it if someone could recommend a good, reliable card reader with guaranteed UHS Speed Class 3 support—ideally one available in our local stores. Once I buy one, I'll update the review with new tests.

To find out the memory card's actual speed more accurately, I bought a Transcend RDF5 card reader.


And now, as they say, I have two pieces of news: one bad and one good.
The bad news: read speed went up, but write speed actually dropped a little. So the card doesn't meet Class 3 requirements :(
The good news: devices with the newer Atom processors really do have a good card reader. It's strange that this hasn't been mentioned anywhere.


As an additional check, I ran the same test on another computer: the first was running x64, the second x32.




That's all. I hope this review was at least somewhat useful. As always, I look forward to your questions in the comments.

The product was provided by the store for review.