SanDisk’s newly-announced series of creator-focused, entry-level storage devices that were announced at CES now have pricing. These products come in a sickly blue gradient and are more expensive than the same performing cards and SSDs the company has been making for years.
Oddly enough, these new storage devices don’t use SanDisk’s new logo either (nothing from the company uses it, actually), but they do eschew the typical black and red colors that are instantly recognizable and have been for years. The company’s new “vibrant” blue and purple gradient is designed to appeal to “content creators and other creatives” with “performance levels suitable for newcomers.”
The series includes six storage devices: an SD card, a microSD card, two thumb drives, and two SSD products. The most performant of the photography-focused products appear to be, at least in some capacity, reskins of existing SanDisk products, including the SD cards, portable SSD, and Desk Drive.
These reskins are more expensive than the original products SanDisk has been selling for years.
The new $280 Creator Series 1TB v60 SD Card is a repackaged version of the Extreme Pro V60 card that is available today for $260. The new Creator Series 8TB Desk Drive is available for $600 while the company’s red and black version which has been for sale for some time is available for $550. Both these products promise identical performance to the older versions and are, as mentioned, priced higher.
The Creator Series microSD 1TB card appears to be a replica of SanDisk’s existing 1TB Extreme card. The product page shows that it features the same performance, despite what B&H publishes on its website, and costs $110 — that’s $20 more than the original black and gold colored card.
The portable SSD, specifically the Creator Series 4TB USB 3.2 Gen 2×2, is also more expensive than the well-known Extreme Portable 4TB SSD, but it does make one change: rather than using USB 3.2 Gen 2, the new blue-hued SSD uses USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 to promise up to 2,000 MB/s read speeds. Of note, USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 is not particularly common. It’s more prevalent on PCs, but nonexistent on Mac products (Apple did put the port on one of its older MacBooks, in one case. That MacBook has since been discontinued). Without this specific compatibility, performance will be the same as USB 3.2 Gen 2, which is around 1,000 MB/s transfer speeds. Of note, SanDisk boasts that the new Creator Series SSD has up to 2,000 MB/s read speeds but, again, despite what B&H lists on its website, declined to publish the write speed performance, only stating that they are “lower.”
The new Creator Series SSD with the slightly updated port costs $350 while the original Portable SSD costs $250.
All of this said, these portable SSDs are the same series that were sold with a major design flaw that caused them to suddenly and without warning stop working. SanDisk never publicly addressed the fiasco and, despite the known issue, continued to sell these SSDs at a discount to unsuspecting buyers. As a result, PetaPixel does not recommend photographers purchase any SanDisk product — especially when they’re more expensive reskins of existing products.
SanDisk’s reskinned “Creator Series” storage products have middling performance that is indeed probably enough for most entry-level content creators. However, none of it is a good value even compared to SanDisk’s own offerings let alone the competition. For example, Lexar’s 1TB SD card that promises identical performance to SanDisk’s is $220 — $40 cheaper than SanDisk’s most affordable version.
Image credits: SanDisk
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