Transcend JetDrive Lite 330
Transcend has begun offering its JetDrive Lite 330 expansion cards for 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models, providing users of Apple’s latest Macs with an affordable way to increase storage capacity. The cards provide up to 512GB of additional storage for less than $90, giving users a viable alternative to paying Apple’s high prices for more internal storage at point of purchase.
I used to run my 2012 MacBook Pro with an SD Card permanently in it for my Time Machine backup. That’s less necessary now that we have APFS, but this still seems like a useful option for auxiliary storage given how compact it is. The performance is more like a hard drive than an SSD, but that’s fine for storing photos or archived files.
Update (2022-04-21): Tim Hardwick:
The 1TB option adds to Transcend’s existing JetDrive capacities, which start at $35.99 for the 128GB version and $250 for the 1TB capacity card on Amazon.
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The JetDrive Lite 330 has been around for ~8 years now. (Card slot depth on the new 14" & 16" is the same as the 2015 and older 13".)
This seems to be simply a mild refreshing of the previous card with more capacity. They didn't even upgrade from UHS-I to the UHS-II the newer MBPs support. Max speed is still capped at 95 MB/s rather than 300. (And the fact that the MBPs come with UHS-II is itself disappointing, since the faster UHS-III is 5 years old at this point!)
Thankfully though I'm looking for something like this I'm in no rush. Someone will do it right eventually.
A little downside is, that the SD Card drains permant a small amount of power. It my be less siginificant with the new M1 MacBooks, because the batterie lasts very long.