This article will help you decide which size of PSP memory fits your needs, provide you with a little more information about PSP memory cards, and give you a little advice on avoiding cheap counterfeit memory cards.

Good news. The upcoming PSP Go already comes with 16GB of internal memory, practically doing away with the need for external memory, and the flop that is UMD is nowhere in sight. As always the case with Sony's products though, save your breath if you're waiting for a price cut.

So maybe you've planned to get yourself the original PSP instead and wonder how much you're gonna have to shelve for memory. Or maybe you wanna know more about the memory sticks that the PSP uses (though it beats me who would do a paper on memory for PSP, some of the information here could be relevant for a general paper on memory cards as a whole).

Either way, you've come to the right place!

(Note: For the rest of the article, I'll be using both the terms "memory card" and "memory stick". They're both the same thing. Sony just decided to be different and called them Memory Sticks.)

If you're just here to buy PSP memory and find out which size you should get, then skip ahead.

Memory Stick is the removable flash memory card format launched by Sony.

Memory Stick PRO Duo is one of their most recent, popular form factors, competing with Secure Digital (SD) memory cards.

Most of Sony's products can only use Memory Sticks and no other format. The PSP is no exception. To be specific, the PSP uses the Memory Stick PRO Duo format.

The biggest size for Memory Stick PRO Duo is 32GB! If you think that's big, think again. Sony and SanDisk have plans to release a Memory Stick format for Extended High Capacity (tentative name), which can go up to 2TB!

With all this talk about how much bigger the storage capacity is, you might be asking: Do I really need that much space?

And the answer is: No, not really. At least, not for the PSP.

Brand

For better or for worst, since it's Sony's proprietary format, there aren't that many brands of PSP memory sticks. I'd say as long as it's either Sony, SanDisk or even Lexar, then you're good. Just go for the cheapest one you can get.

Size

First, a rough price guide I made by looking through Amazon.com:

• 1GB $5-10
• 2GB $10-25
• 4GB $15-40
• 8GB $25-45
• 16GB $70-90

As you can see, the price sky-rockets at 16GB. I'd go so far as to say it's just not worth it. You might think you really do need all that space, but really you don't. You could easily backup most of the data on your own PC using a card reader, and just keep the stuff you actually need on the go on your PSP. I can't imagine why you'd need 16GB unless you plan to use your PSP to carry a whole bunch of movies and music.

So as a general rule of thumb, if you're using the PSP mostly for...

• Gaming. 1 or 2GB should be more than enough to store your saved game data. However, if you're planning on storing the games itself on your PSP memory, rather than lugging around all those UMDs, then consider 4GB or even 8GB. Keep in mind that a full game's size varies from 200MB to 2GB.
• Also for music, movies etc. Might be advisable to get 4GB or 8GB depending on how much space you want to allocate for your games, music, and movies respectively. 16GB if you really have the cash to blow.
  

Some of you might be curious about this word stamped on your memory stick.

MagicGate is basically a form of copy-protection introduced by Sony, a DRM like that with SD cards.

It's nothing to worry about unless you're trying to copy files that are encrypted commercial content, in which case it won't even let you.

Make sure you're not getting ripped off. It could be a counterfeit memory card.

How to avoid it?

• Buy only known brands. As I've mentioned before, you can't go wrong with Sony, SanDisk or Lexar.
• Buy from known stores you trust. Make sure they have a good return policy. Amazon's a solid choice.