Cyber Monday is not always about the big-ticket items. You know what I mean: that 65-inch 4K TV for $499, that King-sized mattress for $870 (opens in new tab), or that Air Fryer for $54.99. Sometimes, it’s about the little stuff. I mean really little stuff, like a 1TB SD card that can fit on the tip of one finger.
Currently, I’m way too excited about a Cyber Monday deal on one of these cards: just $99 for storage that once filled four heavy 256GB spinning hard drives, which, when stacked, were as tall as half a loaf of bread.
The specific Cyber Monday deal (really a Cyber Weekend deal, amirite?) I’m talking about a $99 SanDisk Ultra microSD 1TB card (opens in new tab) (originally $136.99). This is not SansDisk’s fastest solid-stage storage option. In another stellar Cyber Monday deal, I could pay $117 for the “Extreme” version. That’s nice, but I don’t need that level of read-write times (190mb/ps vs 150mb/ps), and I’m really into the idea of 1TB for under $100.
To understand why I’m so excited about this deal, you need to know a little bit about me:
- First, I’ve been doing this job for a long time and have seen almost the entire history of modern computer storage.
- Second, I save everything, which means I never have enough storage.
- Third, I have a habit of misplacing tiny microSD cards and am always in search of fresh ones.
Let’s dig back into the first thing, though. Back in the mid-1980s, our storage options were limited to giant gloppy drives (8- and then 5-inch) that held, if we were lucky, 360K. In 1986, IBM blessed us with 1.44MB, 3.5-inch floppy disks (not floppy because they were all in hard, protective cases), which were the standard through much of the 1990s. Our spinning hard drives were tiny, too. We really weren’t talking gigabytes until the mid-1990s.
At the same time that hard drives ballooned in storage space, portable storage kept shrinking and growing in capacity. Flash drives initially offered no more space than a typical floppy, but soon they were offering MBs and then GBs of storage.
I can still vividly remember the first time I held a 16GB microSD in my hand during the early aughts. At the time, it was a prototype, and I wondered when, if ever, I’d be using these cards and that much mobile storage space. I couldn’t imagine 4K video and 24MP photos.
Now I have 32GG, 128GB, and 256GB microSD cards scattered around my office.
Never enough space
On the second point of why I always need more storage, I blame my love of photography and drones. I take a lot of bird and moon photos, and even though my Sony Alpha a6000 takes standard SD cards, I have a collection of SD-card-sized micro-SD card adapters: you just slide the little card into the big card and use it like any other standard SD card. So easy. My deal card happens to include a memory adapter – for free.
Most of my drones use microSD cards that usually go flying when I press to spring-release the little buggers from the drone.
This leads me back to the reason I often lose these cards. As much as I love them, microSD cards are virtually weightless, and when they slip from your grasp, it’s easy to lose them underfoot, along with all your precious photos and videos.
Why this card? Why now?
I’d say that a $99 1TB microSD card is a threshold product. It means that we can now expect $99 (or cheaper) prices on 1TB (or more) going forward. You pay a lot of money for, say, a 1TB iPhone 14 Pro or 1TB MacBook Pro. Obviously, you also get screens, chassis, a CPU, and cameras, but the storage is part of the cost.
My one caveat about microSD cards though is that while I’m sure you can find even cheaper CyberMonday microSD deals, be careful. I’m buying the SanDisk for a reason. It’s a trusted name, and if you get some off-brand storage, you may not be happy with the card’s performance. What I’ve found is that cheaper cards do not stand up to writing, deleting, and rewriting. Errors get introduced, and soon the card is corrupted and unusable.
If, however, you buy a card like this, you’ll probably be happy. And, just think about it, you could have 5TBs of portable storage for $495. That’s pretty awesome, right?
Check out the Cyber Monday microSD card deals below.
More early Cyber Monday deals
- Amazon devices: 50% off Echo Dot, Fire TVs, & tablets (opens in new tab)
- Apple devices: AirPods, iPads, Apple Watch (opens in new tab)
- Beauty: 60% off make-up & skin (opens in new tab)
- Cheap gifts: gifts under $25 (opens in new tab)
- Christmas Pajamas: family pajamas from $14.99 (opens in new tab)
- Coffee makers: Keurig, Ninja, Cuisinart & more (opens in new tab)
- Fashion: tops, coats, and footwear from $4.50 (opens in new tab)
- Gift ideas: 40% off holiday gifts for the family (opens in new tab)
- Headphones: 40% off Apple, Samsung & Bose (opens in new tab)
- Home: up to 70% off cordless vacs (opens in new tab)
- Kitchen: 25% off coffee makers, air fryers, & more (opens in new tab)
- Smart home: 59% off speakers, vacuums & TVs (opens in new tab)
- Toys: best-selling toys from $12.99 (opens in new tab)
- TVs: smart TVs from $99.9 (opens in new tab)