If you’re plagued by the cacophony produced during data transfer on your memory cards, Sony’s new $160 offering will be music to your ears.
Sony is in a weird place right now, it’s slowly breaking its various arms off in an effort to save costs, but at the same time it’s seen fit to release what is arguably one of the nichiest SD cards in the world.
The company made waves at this year’s CES by unveiling a new premium Walkman-branded music player, one that supported the new LDAC codec of Sony’s own design and rocked a price tag of around $1200. But if that’s the company’s idea of a music player for audiophiles, this new micro SD is without question the storage media for that same market.
The wonderfully named SR-64HXA (catchy) is an ¥18,500 (£100) 64GB microSD card that Sony claims offers premium sound by being quieter. That is to say, Sony’s engineers have apparently designed the card so that it produces less noise during data transfer – a process that from our experience is pretty quiet to begin with.
Whilst we can’t unequivocally fault these claims, data transfer during playback isn’t a continuous process, the ZX2 (that expensive Sony Walkman we mentioned earlier) likely buffers tracks, only occasionally actually needing to read the card, but hey, if you build it they will come, right?
Well, ‘we’re not sure’ is more accurately what Sony anticipates. A spokeswoman told the Wall Street Journal, “We aren’t that sure about the product’s potential demand, but we thought some among people who are committed to great sound quality would want it.” At five times the price of a regular 64GB microSD card, we’re curious to find out whether ‘some people’ are interested too.
It sound like the strongest vote of confidence from the product’s creators but who are we to call Sony out. The company is known for reaching further outside of its comfort zone when compared to its rivals and this must be a market it deems important.
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