PlayStation Vita Memory Card 64GB(PCH-Z641J)

As a release day owner of my Vita, I started out with the 8g card. With few games at the time this wasn't really a big deal. I soon jumped up to the 16g and stuck it out there because I didn't want to pay so much more for the 32g. Now with a larger library of games, especially those with PS Plus subscriptions and other downloaded games available I really didn't want to wait any longer. I was a bit hesitant at first to import the 64g card since they are only available in Japan. Sony hasn't released them in the US (which boggles the mind) and at first some of the price gouging on them was insane. After waiting a bit for the price to drop I took the plunge.The 64GB card has gotten a lot of bad reviews. Why? Not because of a faulty item, but because of price. I can understand this as I hesitated for a long time before purchasing any card bigger than the 8GB. It's also understandable as many sellers were significantly price gouging when these were first released in Japan. Consumers want Sony to know they are unhappy with the choice to keep us locked to purchasing their memory. Yes, Sony has made a smart move to lock consumers in. Now that the new version of the Vita is out, it's pretty obvious it isn't going to change. There is no reason to keep a smaller number of games, music, and videos on your Vita if you really don't have to. The price is considerable, but it's the best bang for your buck. If you purchase any of the smaller cards you're ending up paying more in the long run even when they are on sale. (Black Friday/Cyber Monday included)Yes, it WILL work on your US Vita. These cards are not region locked. I have a US Launch Vita and it works just fine. Keep in mind you'll need to format it when it arrives, at least I needed to. This card will display as being 59GB, when it fact it is 64GB. It's just how the memory is measured, it doesn't mean the memory is faulty or anything like that. As other reviewers have agreed it's a common business practice with memory and it's nothing to be concerned about. Just a heads up as I've read a lot of people are confused and even angered by it.. but it's just how memory works. Backing up your Vita and then moving everything over to the new card is simple. Just connect it to your computer, backup/restore and you're good to go.I for one like physical copies of games. Call me old school but I like having a product I can hold. That's not to say I don't have plenty of downloadable titles as well (Final Fantasy, Walking Dead, PS Plus freebies..etc). I have pretty much every title I own on my Vita right now with room to spare and that feels good. To re-iterate there are no plans to bring this card to the US as of yet. It was initially announced about it's release in Japan last November 2013. So if you're waiting for it to come out here, don't bother. I got this for a decent price with Prime. It arrived quickly, safely and in new condition. I've had no issues with it and love the fact that I have so much space available. If you're a Vita junkie like me you can't go wrong here. Don't sell yourself short purchasing a 32GB card that won't save you money in the end. Purchase from a trusted seller and give your Vita some freedom. Hate on Sony for smart business practice but in the end the product does work.Pro's:Isn't Region locked.59GB, plenty of space for your favorite games, music, movies, etc.Easy to install and use.Con's:Price.

Let me get this out of the way first: I despise Sony's proprietary price gouging with a fiery passion. For this much money, you can buy a decent 120GB SSD. But I digress. This card will display 59GB when you look at its storage capacity on the Vita itself. I've included an explanation at the end of this review on why your card will read 59GB when you put it in. For those of you who don't want to read all of it, 59GB is what is displayed and this is not incorrect, nor is saying that it is 64GB wrong, it's just a common deceptive practice in today's digital storage market.This card, despite being a Japanese import, works just fine on American PS Vitas. What you are buying is a direct Japanese import, not a card that's been localized for North America. I'm using it on my NA PCH-2000 and I've played games from it, it works just fine. The amount of data on this card makes it a far better deal than all the other cards, and you'll never realisitcally fill this thing unless you're a Vita junkie and have a ridiculous number of games from PSN downloads. I put 5 PS Vita games (Borderlands 2 with all DLC, Gravity Rush, Uncharted, Soul Sacrifice, and WipEout 2048) and 3 PSone classic games (Front Mission 3, FFVII, and FFVIII) on here and it's only taken up 9GB of space. You can get by on the 32GB card, but I'd rather not have to worry about disk space, especially for a relatively minor increase in price comparatively speaking. Swapping cards is frustrating on PS Vita, mainly because it requires you to completely reboot, it's nothing like PSP. However, that's on the Vita's end, not this card's.An explanation on digital storage sizes:The card holds 64GB measured in metric units as opposed to binary units. What's the difference you ask? This is a fairly common practice that many people misunderstand. This thing will display 59GB to your console, despite the fact that it is in fact 64GB. Why? It's not because 5GB is allotted to "formatting" (it doesn't take 5GB to do that). 64GB is measured in metric units, meaning it is measured as 64 billion bytes, since giga- means billion. In computer architecture, measurements are based on binary units, meaning each power of 10 is actually 10 bits, which is 2^10 = 1024 Bytes = 1kB. Expanding this, 1MByte = 1024kBytes = 1,048,576Bytes, and 1GB = 1024MB = 1,048,576kB = 1,073,741,824Bytes in binary units. However, in metric units, 1GB = 1,000,000,000Bytes. The difference is then 1,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = 0.931, so metric measurements allow them to display sizes that are actually 7% smaller. If you do the math, 0.931*64GB = 59.6GB, so it's 64GB in metric (what they write), 59.6GB in binary (what the computer reads). This is a common business practice and is how literally every form of digital storage is marketted nowadays.