At Last, We're Discovering New Methods to Expand Your Switch 2's Insufficient Storage Fourfold

If you’re like me, your hungry Switch 2’s belly is already full up with a slate of launch games combined with your backlog of original Switch titles. When a growing number of games take up 60GB or more on your new handheld, you’ll want to look for extra storage options. Unfortunately, every option available right now costs close to half of what you already need to spend on Nintendo’s $450 handheld console.

The Switch 2 only accepts microSD Express cards, not stock-standard microSD. Express-level cards first debuted in 2023 to enable faster write speeds. For cameras, this meant images would load onto the card much faster after you press the shutter button. For gaming, the cards write faster, but they also read quicker as well. When games take up more storage space, being able to load that data faster matters. Fellow memory card maker Lexar announced the first 1TB microSD Express card back in April. That card cost $200 and had 900MB/s read and 600MB/s write speeds. GameStop also sells a 1TB card for $190.

UK-based company Team Group, which makes memory cards and SSDs, dropped details about its Apex SD7.1 microSD Express with a standout 1TB of storage. That’s four times the amount of space you get with the Switch 2, and it seems extra enticing until you realize there’s no word about when it will be available and little to hint about how much it will cost. Team Group’s Apex card has read and write speeds of up to 800MB/s and 700MB/s, respectively. Such a card would technically be able to handle 16 60GB games or 45 games the size of Mario Kart World. These newfangled microSD Express cards can plug into older handhelds, but you won’t see the same read and write speeds on devices that normally support base microSD. Older full-size SD Cards with the SDXC (Secure Digital eXtended Capacity) standard with storage options up to 2TB max out at around 300 MB/s read speeds.

You don’t have to look too far in the past to see how the cost might scale on such a new form of flash storage. The first 1TB microSD card from SanDisk cost $450 at launch in spring 2019. That’s as much as a Switch 2 today. Prices slipped fast once more manufacturers jumped on the 1TB train, and today you can grab that same SanDisk card for under $90. Currently, you can get a Nintendo-branded 256GB Samsung microSD Express card with a little Mario “M” for $60. A 512GB ONN card also goes for $60, but that’s currently sold out on sites like Walmart. Pricing doesn’t scale linearly, but with more cards available, the cost of 1TB Express-level cards could come down at a relatively fast pace.

Nintendo was very excited to tell the world the Switch 2 had eight times the amount of storage capacity of the original Switch. However, all that means is the sequel handheld has a bare 256GB to hold your mountain of games. Games like Street Fighter VI ask for 48.3 GB, while Split Fiction demands a full 73GB. What compounds this issue is the number of launch titles that don’t exist on Nintendo’s game cards. Games can come in three different digital formats: either as digital download only, as a code-in-a-box, or as a game-key card. The latter is a physical card that essentially acts as a code to download the game from Nintendo’s eShop. You can’t play the game without the card inserted into the Switch 2.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUQnJaEh-bA[/embed]

Older microSD cards have completely different pin configurations, and they aren’t compatible with the Switch 2. MicroSD Express can use two more modern standards of interfacing with devices, including PCI Express or NVM Express, which allow for faster speeds than the microSD card interface. Still, if you’re installing your games on your system, you should look to fill up your internal storage first. Tests of load speeds on Mario Kart World show that the game loads three seconds faster through internal storage than through a microSD Express card. The Lexar card with the highest storage space played catch-up with the smaller Samsung and SanDisk cards. Coming up last was the flash storage on the physical game card. I would sacrifice slightly faster load times for the sake of actually owning the games I play, but if you play on Switch 2, you may not have the choice.