Last weekend, I went to buy a microSD card for my Steam Deck from Amazon. OK, that’s not the most interesting start to a story you’ve probably read, but what should have been a quick and easy search and purchase, instead turned into a rather demoralizing experience where I realized how bad the situation has become with Amazon and scam products.
I’ve bought plenty of things on Amazon before (and usually hate myself for it), but the situation with microSDs really took me back. Upon searching for a microSD on Amazon, the results mix well known brands with unbranded microSD cards with prices (and capacities) that seem to be too good to be true – and sadly are.
Usually, if you’re buying storage such as microSD or a Solid State Drive (SSD) for your PC, you should invest in a well-known and trustworthy brand. However, as I was looking for a microSD card that would just hold some games, and with the Steam Deck not supporting the fastest microSD speeds, I clicked on a few of the unbranded ones first.
The biggest initial red flag with these products is that they are drastically cheaper than other cards. A 128GB SanDisk microSD card would go for around £25 to £50 (between $30 – $65), while these suspicious microSDs go for a lot less.
Another big warning was the fact that some of these cards were promising 1TB (terabyte) or storage for the same amount as a 64GB card. This obviously doesn’t make much sense, even if you think that you pay extra for a well-known brand. Also,…
