The horrors of the current storage market became more than just a news headline for me this month, I had to do the awful thing, try and get a new MicroSD card. Thankfully, the Biwin Amber ME300 1TB microSD Express card presented its self, I’ve used their products in the past, had good experience with them, and the price was about as reasonable as can be in this inflated market; no fault of Biwin, of course. The card is a high-performance storage solution engineered by Biwin to meet the demanding requirements of modern gamers and content creators, and since I’m both, it’s an easy sell.

Targeted at next-generation portable gaming consoles, high-end smartphones, cameras, and laptops, this storage isn’t ideal for those who need more storage, obviously, but also high performance. While not as fast as modern NVMe drives, given its size, it still packs quite a punch, allowing it to deliver fast loading times for gaming, quick file transfers for onloading or offloading content, and it’ll easily keep pace with the high resolution and high refresh rate capabilities of modern phones and cameras.

The Biwin Amber ME300 stands out by combining PCIe NVMe performance with the compact form factor of a standard microSD card. Compliant with the SD 7.1 specification, the card utilises a dual-protocol interface that supports high-speed PCIe Gen3x1 operation while retaining full backward compatibility with legacy UHS-I host devices. This design allows users to expand their portable game libraries up to 1TB, accommodating massive game installations and media files without frequent file management. Thankfully, that’s exactly what we needed, as our mobile gaming devices such as the Switch, SteamDeck and Retroid Pocket Nova filled up with games FAST, and let me tell ya, PC games do not like to fit on mobile devices like the Nova and its 128GB internal storage. Furthermore, the storage medium incorporates robust physical protections designed to resist water, dust, shocks, temperature extremes, and X-rays, ensuring data integrity during mobile use. For me, a few train journeys and playing in the games room are unlikely to subject it to much water and X-rays, but it’s good to know it’ll hold up should I have a stranger day than usual.

• SD 7.1 specification compliance utilizing PCIe NVMe performance
• Generous 1TB storage capacity for extensive game libraries and media
• Backward compatibility with legacy UHS-I host devices
• Built-in physical protection against water, dust, shocks, and temperature variations
• Optimized for next-generation handheld gaming consoles and high-resolution video recording

Performance figures for the Amber ME300 leverage its advanced bus interface to deliver rapid data transfers. When operating within a compatible microSD Express slot, the card achieves sequential read speeds of up to 900 MB/s and write speeds reaching up to 800 MB/s. These data rates provide a significant upgrade over conventional UHS-I alternatives, making it well-suited for high-framerate gaming and 4K media workflows.

• Capacity: 1TB
• Interface: SD 7.1 specification, combining PCIe Gen3x1 and UHS-I dual protocols
• Maximum Sequential Read Speed: Up to 900 MB/s
• Maximum Sequential Write Speed: Up to 800 MB/s
• Speed Class Support: Class 10, V30
• Form Factor: microSDXC