The Raspberry Pi is a nano-computer which only option is the storage – the CPU, memory, and network are soldered to the board. The storage is done through a small SD card called a microSD card. There are a lot a lot of those cards with quite a few manufacturers (and integrators). I tested several dozens of them, I already published some results… and then the Raspberry Pi 3 (RPi 3) came out. What influence does the new RPi 3 has over the Raspberry Pi 2 (RPi 2) when it comes to storage? Here are the results and the winners might not be who you think.
The links in the table are pointing to goods being sold and shipped by Amazon, LLC (when possible). You may find other vendors cheaper but I suspect there is some weird things going on in the supply chain: I have experienced very strange variation of performance for some of the memory card.
Raspberry Pi 3 (RPi 3)
| Price | Reading | Writing | ||||
| (USD) | KB/s | IOPS | KB/s | IOPS | ||
| Lexar | High-Performance 633x | 29.47 | 6507.6 | 1626 | 113.9 | 26 |
| Lexar | Professional 1000x | 46.92 | 8928.2 | 2232 | 930.8 | 232 |
| Patriot | EP Pro | 29.99 | 9236.8 | 2308 | 785.4 | 196 |
| PNY | High Performance | 19.99 | 7878.0 | 1968 | 408.1 | 102 |
| PNY | Turbo Performance | 24.99 | 6764.2 | 1686 | 364.4 | 90 |
| Samsung | EVO | 19.99 | 11247.6 | 2810 | 1773.4 | 443 |
| Samsung | Pro | 39.53 | 9445.8 | 2360 | 1654.3 | 413 |
| Samsung | Pro+ | 49.99 | 9164.7 | 2291 | 1578.5 | 394 |
| SanDisk | Ultra | 19.99 | 6057.8 | 1514 | 418.9 | 104 |
| SanDisk | Ultra PLUS | 23.94 | 8268.1 | 2066 | 1740.4 | 435 |
| SanDisk | Extreme | 27.98 | 10232.7 | 2557 | 1283.4 | 320 |
| SanDisk | Extreme PLUS | 46.95 | 10196.0 | 2545 | 1939.6 | 484 |
| SanDisk | Extreme PRO | 52.94 | 10297.4 | 2574 | 1939.8 | 484 |
| SP | Elite | 17.00 | 2977.2 | 744 | 467.0 | 116 |
| Transcend | Premium 400x | 17.99 | 5128.9 | 1282 | 115.7 | 27 |
Raspberry Pi 2 (RPi 2)
| Price | Reading | Writing | ||||
| (USD) | KB/s | IOPS | KB/s | IOPS | ||
| Lexar | High-Performance 633x | 29.47 | 5064.2 | 1266 | 113.4 | 26 |
| Lexar | Professional 1000x | 46.92 | 7147.0 | 1782 | 833.2 | 208 |
| Patriot | EP Pro | 29.99 | 8416.3 | 2102 | 794.6 | 198 |
| PNY | High Performance | 19.99 | 6207.7 | 1548 | 393.9 | 98 |
| PNY | Turbo Performance | 24.99 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Samsung | EVO | 19.99 | 9533.2 | 2382 | 1937.2 | 484 |
| Samsung | Pro | 39.53 | 9836.8 | 2458 | 1630.9 | 407 |
| Samsung | Pro+ | 49.99 | 9065.2 | 2266 | 1476.6 | 369 |
| SanDisk | Ultra | 19.99 | 4299.1 | 1074 | 445.0 | 111 |
| SanDisk | Ultra PLUS | 23.94 | 7265.9 | 1816 | 2218.6 | 554 |
| SanDisk | Extreme | 27.98 | 8717.8 | 2177 | 1410.2 | 351 |
| SanDisk | Extreme PLUS | 46.95 | 9118.3 | 2279 | 2217.7 | 554 |
| SanDisk | Extreme PRO | 52.94 | 9720.3 | 2429 | 2549.1 | 637 |
| SP | Elite | 17.00 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| Transcend | Premium 400x | 17.99 | 6277.2 | 1568 | 114.3 | 26 |
Updates
2016-04-03:
- Big, monstrous typo corrected: units are KB/s and not anything else. Oops…
2016-03-25:
- First version, replaces the previous blog entry. Results may differ as more cards of the same type may have been used and I am reporting the average.