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After doing 10 hours of research and testing, we found the to be the best SD card for most people. The Extreme Pro is fast enough to shoot 4K video, had the fastest speeds in our in-camera and benchmark tests, and is reasonably priced. Plus, it comes with a lifetime limited warranty backed by a reliable manufacturer. Last updated: May 11, 2017 After doing a new round of research and testing, we’ve chosen the as our top pick and the, our previous budget recommendation, as our runner-up. If the SanDisk Extreme Pro is out of stock, we recommend the. The Transcend was our budget pick last year because of its excellent price-to-performance ratio—it’s usually about 10¢ cheaper per gigabyte than the SanDisk. The Transcend is fast enough to shoot 4K video, but was slower than the SanDisk in our burst shooting test and artificial benchmarks.
Like most good SD cards, though, the Transcend performed about as well as the Extreme Pro in sequential read testing. It also has the same lifetime limited warranty. If you own a camera or camcorder, you’ll probably need an SD card to store photos and video. SD cards can also be used to add more storage to your laptop, portable scanner, ebook reader, or gaming console. Check your device to make sure you need an SD card (not a ) and that your device doesn’t include one that works well enough. If you already have an SD card that gets the job done, you shouldn’t upgrade.
Shop a wide selection of Micro SD Cards at Amazon.com from top brands including SanDisk, Transcend, Samsung, Sony, and more. Gigastone Micro SD Card 32GB 5-Pack MicroSD HC U1 C10 with Mini Case and SD Adapter High Speed Memory Card Class 10 UHS-I Full HD Video Nintendo Dashcam Gopro Camera Samsung Canon Nikon DJI Drone 158. Jun 29, 2019 Runner-Up, Best for RAW Shooting: Sony SF-G32/T1 SDHC UHS-II at Amazon, 'Can reach transfer speeds of up to 300 MB/s.' Best for Pros: Lexar Professional 2000x SDHC at Amazon, “For serious, high-energy photographers and video producers.” Best Capacity: Lexar Pro 256GB SD Card at Amazon, “Transfers data at high speeds and holds a ton of it.”.
Our pick isn’t leaps and bounds better than anything that’s been available for the past couple of years. But if you need another SD card, or you’re having issues with the speed of your card—maybe you burst shoot photos in raw format, or want to shoot 4K and it can’t keep up—consider our picks. How to avoid counterfeit cards. Fake memory cards are a. Because they look nearly identical to the real thing, they’re easy to buy by mistake, only to find. Don’t buy from third-party vendors on big marketplace sites.
Instead, when buying an SD card, look for “Ships from and sold by Amazon” or purchase directly from a reputable seller, like Best Buy or Adorama. If you get your card from Amazon or any other retailer that provides packaging choices, be sure to select the original packaging (not Amazon’s “Frustration-free” packaging, for example).
Some receiving fake cards directly from Amazon. If you suspect your card is a fake—look for, or to check its speeds—contact Amazon customer support for an exchange. How we picked. Four of the SD cards we tested for this update. The most important features of an SD card are speed, reliability, price, and warranty. SD cards are most commonly used in cameras for storing image and video files as you shoot them. Because most cameras can take photos faster than they can write them to storage, images are first saved to a small but speedy buffer in the camera.
Once the buffer is full, the images must be written to the SD card before you can shoot any more. The faster the device can write data to the card—the card’s write speed—the faster this buffer clears and the sooner you can shoot more photos. So write speed is the most important spec for SD cards that are used in cameras.
If you use burst mode a lot, it’s important to know how fast a card needs to be to keep up with continuous shooting raw. We did some back-of-the-napkin math to find out, multiplying Wirecutter’s camera recommendations for burst frames per second by their average raw image size to figure out a ballpark image bit rate in megabytes per second. Our, the Nikon D7200, has a burst shooting image bit rate of about 200 MB/s, which slows after six shots until the camera’s processor clears the images to the SD card. Our, the Canon PowerShot G9 X, isn’t nearly as demanding: It has an image bit rate of about 58 MB/s. Our, the Sony RX100 II, has a continuous shooting image bit rate of around 114 MB/s, though.
Bit rate varies by camera, generally getting faster as cameras get better. And since an SD card can last you a decade, spending the extra $10 now instead of getting a cheaper, slower card is worth it. Read speed is important when copying data from the card to a computer, and when reviewing photos on the camera. Read speed is not as important for cameras as write speed, but because read speed is often faster, manufacturers like to brag about it on the label. Read speed is more useful for SD cards used for expanded storage in, say, a laptop, since you’ll mostly be accessing media you’ve already put on the card, or copying photos from the card to the laptop’s storage. There isn’t much of a difference in read speeds among the best SD cards, though: All of the UHS-I cards we tested for this update had an average read speed of around 92 MB/s.
This is what you should look for in an SD card:. Class 10 rating: This rating guarantees the card has a minimum sustained sequential write speed of least 10 MB/s—the bare minimum for shooting 1080p video. (The other speed classes are 2, 4, and 6, which denote the minimum write speed in megabytes per second.). U3 rating: Since many newer cards have speeds faster than 10 MB/s, Ultra High Speed classes further differentiate their performance. U1 cards are recommended for 1080p video recording and have minimum write speeds of at least 10 MB/s; U3 is required for 4K video and designates a minimum write speed of 30 MB/s.
Since U3 cards aren’t prohibitively expensive and you may eventually want to shoot 4K video with this card, we recommend cards with a U3 rating. UHS-I bus mode: is a standard that dictates how different generations of SD cards work. All the point-and-shoot cameras we recommend support at least UHS-I bus cards. The standard is backwards compatible, meaning you can use a faster UHS-II card with a UHS-I camera, or a UHS-I card with a UHS-II camera. But you won’t get the full speed of UHS-II unless both camera and card have support, because it requires an additional row of physical pins to achieve its extra speed. 64 GB capacity: a 64 GB SD card should be spacious enough for most uses, and they’re less expensive per gigabyte than 32 GB cards. If you need more room to store your media, many 128 GB SD cards cost about the same per gigabyte as their 64 GB counterparts.
Check your device to make sure it supports SDXC (extended capacity) cards before buying one. If not, stick with 32 GB to make sure your card works with your device.
Reliability: An SD card holds the only copy of a photo between the time you take it and when you copy it to a computer for editing, so it’s important to get a reliable card from a reputable manufacturer—like, or —to minimize the chances of something going wrong. Many SD cards come with a lifetime or 10-year warranty, and the SD Card Association says most SD cards have a lifespan of about 10 years with “normal usage.”.
Video Speed classes: The V6, V10, V30, V60, and V90 ratings guarantee minimum levels of performance for recording video. Cards with Video Speed class ratings are just becoming available as of early 2017, and we expect more to crop up over the coming year. We researched nearly 30 SD card models that met these criteria, and considered only models that are new or have been updated from the nine models we tested in 2016. We didn’t retest any cards that performed poorly in last year’s tests and haven’t been updated. We found three new UHS-I models worth testing: the, the, and the.We also tested two UHS-II models: the and the. How we tested. We tested each card’s speeds with a USB 3.0 card reader and in two cameras.
We tested the real-life burst shooting performance of this year’s contenders on a, the Sony a6300. We also tested the burst-shooting performance of our UHS-I picks against UHS-II cards on a Fujifilm X-T1 to find out if any of these faster, more expensive cards are worth recommending yet.
Then we plugged each card into a and ran, a benchmarking program designed to test sequential and random read and write speeds on solid-state storage. Between each test, we cleared the cards and reformatted them using the to stabilize performance. We used the same methods to test SD cards this year as we have in previous years. But the cameras, card reader, and laptop we used to test in 2017 are different than the tools we used in 2016. This means that last year’s test results are still useful, but they’re not directly comparable to this year’s benchmarks.
Our pick: 64 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro. The 64 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro had the fastest speeds for the price in our tests. The proved that it is the best SD card for most people because it had the fastest speeds of all the UHS-I cards that we ran through practical and benchmark tests. It’s also reasonably priced, and it’s covered by a backed by a reliable manufacturer. The SanDisk Extreme Pro is a Class 10, U3, V30 card (oh my!), which means it’s fast enough to record both 1080p and 4K video.
SanDisk advertises the card at 95 MB/s read and 90 MB/s write, and we found that to be mostly true in our tests. The SanDisk performed at 93.6 MB/s and 86.2 MB/s in CrystalDiskMark read and write tests, respectively. Write speed is the most important factor for SD cards, and the Extreme Pro had the fastest write speed of any UHS-I card we tested this year by at least 33 percent. Your camera would be able to shoot more images in a shorter amount of time with the SanDisk than it would with any other of the other UHS-I cards we tested. The —which was identical in our benchmarks—was the fastest card we tested last year, too. (You can spot the new Extreme Pro by the V30 rating on the upper-right side of the card’s label.
The older version now costs around twice as much as the new model, so we don’t recommend it unless you can find it for cheaper.) In read tests, the Extreme Pro was the fastest card again, though all of the UHS-I cards we tested had read speeds between 91 MB/s and 95 MB/s. A faster read speed means less time spent waiting for your photos and video to transfer from your card onto your computer.
We also tested each card’s real-world burst shooting speed in two cameras: a Sony a6300 and a UHS-II compatible Fujifilm X-T1. For these tests, we recorded the sound of the shutter closing as we shot a burst of raw images. The resulting waveforms give us a visual representation of each card’s speed. The large group of spikes at the beginning of each waveform represents a burst of shots, which fill the camera’s buffer and must be written to the SD card before you can shoot more photos. Each spike after that is a single shot, and between those spikes the camera is writing files to the SD card.
In short: More, closely clumped spikes means a faster SD card. Shorter intervals indicate better SD card performance. In the Sony a6300, the SanDisk Extreme Pro had the fastest practical write speeds, followed by the much more expensive Lexar 1000x.
The Transcend W60MB/s ranked third, and the Lexar 2000x came last. The 64 GB SanDisk Extreme Pro is much less expensive per gigabyte than the 32 GB model as of this writing—55¢ versus 72¢ for its smaller counterpart. But if your device does not support SDXC (extended capacity) cards, get the. If you need more space, the is the most affordable at 50¢ per gigabyte. SD cards are more durable than hard drives, because they lack moving parts, and they can survive being bumped around and dropped. Like many SD cards, the SanDisk Extreme Pro is rated to survive up to 72 hours in 1 meter of salt or fresh water, can withstand temperatures ranging from –13 ºF to 185 ºF, and is immune to airport X-rays. It’s also backed by a lifetime limited warranty, which covers the SD card as long as it wasn’t used improperly.
Runner-up: 64 GB Transcend W60MB/s. The 64 GB Transcend W60MB/s can shoot both 1080p and 4K video, just like the SanDisk Extreme Pro. The is a good option if the SanDisk Extreme Pro is sold out. Like our top pick, the Transcend is a Class 10, U3 card, which means it’s fast enough to shoot both 1080p and 4K video. (It lacks the new V30 rating, though the U3 specification guarantees the same 30 MB/s minimum write speed.) The Transcend’s write speeds fell behind the SanDisk Extreme Pro’s in practical and benchmark tests, but its read speeds were about as fast in our benchmarks. The Transcend W60MB/s had write speeds of 65 MB/s in the CrystalDiskMark test, making it 21.2 MB/s slower than the Extreme Pro but 26 MB/s faster than the other UHS-I card we tested this year.
Its read speeds were comparable to the SanDisk’s, at 91.9MB/s. Last year, in a bigger pool of contenders and using different testing equipment, the Transcend’s write speeds were faster than four of the nine cards we tested. In our real-world burst shooting test this year, the Transcend was about as fast as our pick, the SanDisk Extreme Pro. Although the Transcend was a touch slower, they both captured 10 shots in around 12 seconds. The Transcend performed well against nine other SD cards in last year’s practical test with an entry-level DSLR, though, even outdoing some with faster benchmark write speeds.
The Transcend is usually cheaper than the SanDisk Extreme Pro at around 46¢ per gigabyte. It has a, too, but at 57¢ per gigabyte, we recommend the SanDisk instead at that size. The Transcend W60MB/s comes with the same lifetime limited warranty as the SanDisk Extreme Pro. What to look forward to. In March 2016, the a new standard for memory cards that will support 360-degree, 3D, and 8K video.
These V60 and V90 cards will feature minimum sequential write speeds of 60 MB/s and 90 MB/s, respectively. Cards with these Video Speed ratings are not widely available just yet, except from, but we plan to test them when they’re more common.
In February 2017, the its UHS-III interface to provide further support for 360-degree, 3D, 4K, and 8K media content. With potential read and write speeds of 624 MB/s, UHS-III doubles the performance of UHS-II cards. We expect it will take a year or two before we see memory cards and devices that support UHS-III. The competition. We only looked at Class 10, U3 cards, because they’re fast enough to shoot both 1080p and 4K video. We also eliminated any cards with quoted read speeds below 85 MB/s and write speeds below 60 MB/s, because faster cards aren’t prohibitively expensive. As mentioned earlier, we tested a couple of UHS-II cards for this update, the and the.
The Lexar 1000x is reasonably priced, but it was slower than our top pick, the UHS-I SanDisk Extreme Pro, in both practical and benchmark tests. We tested the continuous high-speed shooting performance of our top pick, the UHS-I SanDisk Extreme Pro, against the UHS-II Lexar 2000x. The Lexar 2000x is the best UHS-II card we’ve tested and the only one that made a significant difference in shooting. The 2000x was 1.5 times faster than our top pick in our burst shooting test—shooting 15 shots in the time that it took the SanDisk to shoot 10—but at around 2.5 times the price, we don’t think it’s worth it for most people.
It’s a good option for professional photographers with UHS-II cameras who are willing to spend more for better performance, though. Samsung has discontinued all of its SD cards, including our previous pick, the. The is less expensive per gigabyte than our top picks, but its write speeds were 48.7 MB/s slower than the SanDisk Extreme Pro and 26 MB/s slower than the Transcend W60MB/s. Last year’s, our previous recommendation, performed identically to the 2017 SanDisk Extreme Pro. The older version now costs nearly twice as much as the newer model, and we don’t recommend it unless it’s cheaper than the new one.
The older Extreme Pro lacks a V30 rating on the upper-right side of the card’s label. Last year, the had slower write speeds than our picks, and fell behind them in burst shooting tests. It also costs more than twice as much. The and the are more expensive than the SanDisk Extreme Pro, and were slower in last year’s practical and benchmark tests.
The was consistently the slowest of the six cards we tested in four different cameras for last year’s update. The had the worst sequential write speeds of the cards we tested last year. I’m a non-pro using an old (by today’s standards) Canon point-and-shoot (Powershot SD550). I’ve noticed a bit of a lag time in my shooting, especially in burst mode, and think it may be due to an old memory card. I’m planning to upgrade to a new camera in the next year or so, but thought I’d at least get a new memory card for my camera before heading off for vacation.
Would it be worth it for me to try the Sandisk Extreme? Or would it even make a difference in little p&s from 2006?
I’m an avid photographer, but, like I said, totally non-projust take pleasure in capturing a great shot. Good recommendations – the san disk 64gb class 10 uhs-1 sdxc is what I normally use with my canon powershot G15. I can fill up 25-30% of that card in less than 2 hours just by shooting jpegs on a semi continuous basis when I’m catching as much activity as possible or for a timelapse.
The bigger 128GB version of the same card is a good 2nd card to bring a long when fitting out for a 7-10 day family vacation. I don’t bother to offload the files until I get home. But, I will bring a kindle fire hd 8.7 tablet with me to glance through shots or to post 1-2 to flickr. Another piece of advice that you should add to the article is for the people who are buying from Amazon.
A little known secret is that by default Amazon will sell you a bootleg grey market version of this card or any other card for that matter. You have to change your selection yourself because they will sell you the fake inferior one instead unless you take action. The dirty little secret is if you read carefully it will say they are helping you out by sending you a card with “Frustration Free packaging.” AVOID THESE AT ALL COSTS!!!!
Make sure to select RETAIL PACKAGING ONLY! These are the real deal. These Frustration Free Packaging SD cards are the source of virtually all the bad reviews on any flash storage, and they lump the Frustration Free Packaging SD card reviews with the retail packaging reviews just to keep the overall reviews from getting too bad. One bit of warning, if you click on the retail packaging version it will take you to the Frustration Free Packaging version. But all you have to do these days is click a little box that says “Retail or Retail Packaging”. This insures that you get a good card instead of a reject which is what the Frustration Free Packaging SD cards are and believe me they are hit and miss. The real one should look like tha package you would get if you purchase it in a store and the fake Frustration Free Packaging is just anti static bubble wrap.
If you buy a Frustration Free Packaging SD card you will be in for some big time frustration when you start using the card and checking the write speeds and probably read speeds too. And they have an incredibly high failure rate as well. And for gods sake don’t buy anything like that from E bay, they’re all fake and they are doing some kind of firmware hack to make 1 and 2 GB cards show up as 32 GB cards.
You will literally be paying 15 to 20 dollars for a dying 1 or 2 GB card with a write speed of 2MB per second. I bought the real 32 gig SanDisk Extreme from Amazon and I love it.
Hi Merri, Just building on what Tony recommended, there’s one other thing you really need to be aware of. The Nikon D5100 has a built-in video recording limit of 20 minutes or 4GB, whichever hits first So unfortunately, you’re not going to be able to record the entire thing in one go, even if you find a card large enough to hold it. You’ll essentially have to hit “record” again each time the 20 minute limit is up. The reason for this is twofold: 1) It stops the sensor inside the camera from overheating, and generally freaking out. 2) If I understand it right, if a digital camera can record clips longer than 30 minutes, it gets reclassified as a “video camera” and has to pay higher import taxes when it comes into the country. There are ways around this limit, but they involve hacking your camera, and in doing so, you take its own well being into your own hands As for a lens, the 18-55 should do well enough.
Just make sure you set up your camera so you can see the entire stage in one shot—recording performances like that is never easy. Hope that helps, Tim. Fantastic review.
Sandisk 8gb Sdhc Cards
This is exactly the information I needed. Doing a bunch of big jobs and need a bunch of fast SD cards, you saved me a lot of time. I would like to suggest in the future if you can also do a durability/ruggedness test for these high end cards as well. I do a lot of video and thanks to my workflow, physically move these cards quite a bit.
The SD cards themselves never failed on me but their fragile plastic shell tend to crack and fall apart unlike my more sturdy compact flash cards. Now when I buy a bunch of SD cards I would like to know how durable these things are. But the Extreme Pro will write at 90MB/s according to Sandisk’s website vs 60MB/s rate listed for the Extreme Plus.
I feel like this is a considerable amount (the Pro is 50% faster than the Plus) and a glaring omission in this review. Especially given that the review boldly states that “write speed is the most important spec.” It might not be that much faster on read speed, but it is significantly faster with regard to write speed. The review states that write speed is the most important but then compares these two cards based on read speed? I feel like this was overlooked. It would be nice to see the Extreme Pro reviewed as well. We mentioned the Samsung Extreme Pro above, in the 32GB variety: “We eliminated any cards that were rated less than Class 10 or UHS-1, weren’t readily available to buy, or that performed poorly on Steenburgh’s tests, like the 32 GB Samsung Pro, 32 GB Sony 40MB/s, 32 GB Kingston Ultimate, and 32 GB Patriot EP Procards that are popular on Amazon.” and “The 32 GB Samsung Plus is also popular on Amazon, but performed poorly in Tom’s Hardware’s 2014 SD card benchmarks. It’s slower than the Samsung Pro, which also performed poorly on Steenburgh’s burst shooting test.”.
Yes i went through your article carefully. I actually go through ur website regularly before making any purchase & try to buy ur recommendation if its available in India. Nwys i just asked about the samsung card since this product line came out after ur update. Storagereview has benchmarked its sequential read speeds at 87.4MB/s, and write activity at 75.8MB/s.
I am no photographer though, have bought it to use it with my smartphone which i am sure will not be able to utilise even 25% of the speeds. But curiosity got me asking ur opinion as i thought u didnot consider this card in ur tests. Always a pleasure reading ur articles 🙂. We mention them above, they’re made for 4K video What about 4K video? The UHS-3 speed class is recommended by the SD Association for shooting 4K video and was introduced in November 2013. So far manufacturers like SanDisk, Kingston, and Transcend have announced 4K-capable UHS-3 cards. We’ll update this guide with more information and test results when more 4K video SD cards are available, but for now we advise following the recommendation in your camera’s user manual.
These cards are only worth it if you absolutely need the speed; the Extreme Plus is fast enough for the vast majority of people. Obviously the write speed is the key, not the read speed, and the PNY is faster and half the price (today, 64gb for $23).
It is pretty weird to say that the slower card is faster, but that is what you said. How Orwellian! Plus 64gb is the sweet spot and the cards have different speeds for each size. You also need to test them on a variety of USB3 readers since different cards give different speeds on different readers. Another factor is batches. Not all cards with the same product ID have the same speed.
You need to get a few batches for samples to reflect what the buyer reading your review might get. There’s no reason to believe that the buyer would get the same card that you tested, and you need to make that clear before making a recommendation. So, other than the fact that you misstated the results and your methodology is poor, nice review. It’s not written poorly, and your statement was simply wrong. My topic sentence–a good paragraph has a topic sentence–is as follows: ” the write speed is the key, not the read speed.” It could not possibly be more clear, or better positioned within the structure of the paragraph. Instead of blaming someone else for your reading mistake, and then insulting them with “enjoy your inferior product”, why not just weigh the evidence, come to your own opinion, repeat the test with the proper methodology, and provide useful information to others who can benefit from your work?
Testing flash cards is difficult because of the differences in card readers, the differences in card batches, and the operating systems. Use multiple samples of each, and do a statistical analysis. “64GB is the sweet spot” Beware, not all devices can make the leap beyond 32GB. That shifts you from byte offset addressing to sector offset addressing at the SD interface (SDXC vs SDHC) and the file system preformatted on the card is exFAT not FAT32. That means it might not be so sweet at all if your device cannot handle it. This ever-increasing capacity phenomenon produces these leapfrogs of technology standards in such a way that you will see a whole bunch of 32GB SDHC cards in the market, and they’ll eventually be the cheapest size of SDHC card, cheaper than even a 16GB or 8GB card, because they will be the highest volume and the smaller NAND flash chips used in those older cards will become rarer and more expensive. And, the even larger SDXC cards (64GB and up) will eventually come in large volumes, and the 64GB cards will pretty much always be cheaper than any size SDHC card, eventually.
That’s just the way things go. I mean, how much is a box of 10 floppies, compared to a 16GB SD card? And the relative capacity is.
284 to 1, in favor of the SD card, which costs 3x as much more or less. In the article, it says the Extreme Plus was selected ahead of Extreme Pro because “It was only bested by the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/s, which isn’t much faster but is a full $10 more expensive.”, and also “Our previous step-up recommendation was the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95 MB/s. Our new recommendation nearly matches it in performance, so it’s not worth the extra $10 for such a minute performance gain.” But now the prices have changed considerably and the ‘$10 difference’ is all gone. 32 GB Extreme Pro – $36.95 – Extreme Plus – $37.95 –. 16 GB Extreme Pro – $25.95 – Extreme Plus – $24.95 – This kind of make things confusing.
Why two cards at almost the same price? In addition, something I noticed was that 32GB Extreme Pro card is U3, which is actually $1 cheaper than 32GB Extreme Plus U1 card. Amazon prices fluctuate a lot, and pretty recently our pick was down to $30, which is a better deal for most people than the Pro. If you can find the Pro for cheaper, or don’t mind spending extra for a faster card, you’re welcome to. As for the U3 vs U1 difference, it looks like the labeling on the Extreme Plus is currently in the process of being updated to U3 as well.
I’m going to reach out to SanDisk to get a confirmation, but based on the Amazon page it looks like that’s what’s happening. All this splitting hairs over minimal differences in performance. First of all when the memory performance is tested it falls in a range. If it falls in a certain range then it is a certain speed AT A MINIMUM.
It’s like filling a package weight. It can have more but cannot have less. So if the card tested is a little faster it was the luck of the draw. MOST important is the reliability.
IF the card fails you are not getting back to Antarctica, the Yukon, the Panama Canal or the wedding, etc. So arguing over a few dollars price savings is patently stupid. If getting the performance level matters then buy it. Then buy the very best card at that performance level (or higher) you can, no matter the price. This is not a case of ‘buying too much performance’ is wasted.
You can’t over do it on reliability and speed for the most critical function a working camera has; Writing the image to the storage card. For arguments sake would you buy the refurbished card and save 25% and then it fails when you need it? Would you be stupid (for the sake of $10?
Or $20?) when you spend thousands to get where the photo is taken. This is all much to do about nothing.
There is no compromise you can make here without risking that which you cannot risk. And PS: learn to write with proper English: “similarly specced SD cards” (WRAPPING IT UP).
You are writing a review, not chatting over a beer. You consider weighing reasonably priced?!? What rubbish!!!
While I happen to agree with valuing reliability above write speed, it is not nearly as black and white as Mr. A here thinks.
His argument is based on not losing pictures you’ve taken. A slower card could preclude getting the picture in the first place, if your camera’s buffer hasn’t emptied! Those such as QA here who write off the “minimal differences in performance” must not have studied photography much. Henri Cartier-Bresson describes the goal of photography as catching the “decisive moment.” Not the decisive second, or half minute. A slightly faster card may well make the difference between getting a shot that would impress Katie’s Voice from above, and getting on the cover of Sports Illustrated. From QAs descriptions, I assume he’s primarily a landscape photographer, an area where speed matters very little (though I’ve lost the perfect lighting as the sun falls below a mountain or something in shockingly brief moments). Where QA, in his own words, “opens his mouth and removes all doubt” that he is a fool is his assumption that whatever is best for him is surely also best for everyone else, and his refusal to consider that different opinions may both be relevant and intelligent.
First of all, I have no idea how we’re to measure reliability for the masses in a sustainable and accurate way. All I can do is read reviews, comment sections, and etc. And hope I get the luck of the draw. If they’re reliable, then I risk little. If they’re not people will complain. I, however, do not know of any review which has been able to properly measure reliability. So your point of “reliability above all” seems pretty moot if we can’t measure it and just pray (don’t tell me to buy “reliable products.” I think I’m not this inept).
I can’t see how people bought into this because I have learned never to look unto reviews for reliability. YOU LOOK INTO COMPLAINT FORUMS; AMAZON REVIEWS; NEWEGG. They will tell you many grievances, and there and only there will you get your subjective perception of reliability. NO AGGREGATE SCORE CAN EVER TELL YOU THAT (I’m looking at those people who leave 1-star reviews for android apps that are actually necessary for their phones and call it “bloatware”). To fault a review which may only possess one copy of being unable to replicate the problems, and to report potential problems which may or may not happen are very very excellent ways of getting people paranoid, and very, very poor ways of telling them that it’s more reliable than they think unless they somehow count all the complaints as of the review date. Moving on, Performance measurements may be useless to a point for you, but it’s that one way where people do get some numbers and a “general” idea of VALUE OVER MONEY which I believe was the main point for the sandisk and transcend recommendations this year (I know I am arguing anachronistically). It may be luck of the draw, but that’s what reading multiple reviews is about.
No one review SHOULD tell you exactly what it is best for you, and what value you find in a product. Hence, if you REALLY want to be sure it’s not a fluke THEN YOU READ MORE. If it stands that YOU WILL BE GETTING MORE THAN THE STANDARD SPECIFICATION THAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR, and it costs slightly more or even less to slightly less then good for your “value for money.” P.S.
I’m sorry, but I feel like you sound more “important” than your points make you out to be. A lot of “big words” isn’t going to save a holey argument.
(I read so many reviews that I’ve learned what to trust, what not to trust, what they give and do not give, where to find what reviews will never tell you, and so on). While the others seem to agree with one of your points though they do not make it clear (which I think only pertains to the validity of hairline performance as an adequate benchmark and its reduced necessity in reviews). I wholeheartedly disagree with the rest. All you camera geek, and I say that with respect and awe, are going to think I’m an idiot but I have to ask anyway. Are you saying the SD card can affect the speed at which the camera is able to take the next picture? I have always used point and shoot cameras, 2 Cool pix which died and now a Kodak Easyshare. Because the Kodak has become sooooo slow and takes so long to respond I just bought a Canon SX160 to replace it.
I bought a ScanDisk SDHC card for the new Canon but it was $47 for a 32GB. It also has a 4 inside C but it’s not Extreme or Extreme Plus. It seemed like it was too expensive so before I opened it I wanted to check out exactly what the difference between 32 and 64 was and ended up here. I thought cards basically just replaced film and the numbers referred to how many pictures they would hold. My question is, is it possible the Kodak is OK and it’s the card? Be kind, my first camera had a rotating flash cube!
Hi Katie—I’m the camera editor here at Wirecutter, and maybe I can help a bit. So both the camera and the SD card can effect the speed that you can take photos. Think of it this way. You’re trying to fill a glass pitcher using a hose and a funnel (wait, stay with me, I know it’s a silly scenario). If you have a fat hose, the water will come out quickly.
But if you have a tiny funnel, it’ll be slow to trickle into the pitcher. Flip that around, if you have a tiny hose, the pitcher will fill slowly, even if you have a big funnel. Okay, so that’s a pained metaphor—but how fast the camera takes photos takes both the camera and the SD card. Because there’s the matter of how quickly the processor on the camera can crunch the image into a digital file and send it to the SD card, and how quickly the SD card can save the image. So the 32GB and 64GB say how many images the card can save, but the number inside the C (the “Class”) is how fast it can save them. With all that said: $47 for a 32GB Class 4 card is way too much.
Our budget pick has twice the storage for just $25, and will be faster to save images. But the SD card will only speed up how quickly images can be saved to the card, it won’t make your camera function any more quickly otherwise.
And to put it bluntly, the Kodak Easyshares were never great cameras. I’d say stick with the Canon. And if you want a look at what sort of performance you can get out of a cheap camera, check out this guide we wrote.
Thanks Tim, I will check out the referenced guide. I will also take this SD card back to CVS and get your recommended card. I was under pressure to get one to try out a camera I was buying from Craigslist and thought I’d better take a card and batteries. He advertised it as New, never used but you never know. When I got there, the guy explained that his camera broke when he was stationed in Afghanistan and both his wife and mother sent him new cameras.
The instructions and CD were still sealed, he said he never put the batteries in it so I didn’t even unpacked the camera. Gotta trust a Veteran!
Luckily I didn’t need to open this overpriced SD card! I’ll also try a new card for the Kodak. It took pretty good pictures but I’m missing shot while it processes the previous picture. This was taken with the Kodak. It was good enough for what I need, except the zoom which was worthless. I’m hoping for better results from the Canon it was highly recommended and difficult to find in this condition.
Thanks again! Katie, what happened?! Was the camera new?
Did it all work out? I’m asking because in this day and age, well any (!), there are many scam artists and one cannot trust random strangers.
As you put it, “He advertised it as New, never used but you never know.” Exactly! I thought the same thing about his.claim.
to have been in Afghanistan–why wouldn’t the mother and wife have coordinated the buying of a replacement camera for him?! The story didn’t ring true. Maybe it was a “hot” stolen item! So, please partly restore our faith in humanity OR confirm the importance of being vigilant with others, especially off of Craig’s list, though not just there!
————————————- I wrote there are scams in any age because, after all, it was in the 19th century when the phrase “There’s a sucker born every minute” was born. See the fascinating story about this at Turns out, contrary to what is widely believed, it wasn’t P.T. Barnum who said it, though he was involved! First of all, love the site and what you guys do! But I have a slight bone to pick. The author recommends that consumers “buy from a reputable seller and select the original packaging (for example, avoid “frustration-free” packaging on Amazon)”.
I selected Canada as my location when prompted. I wanted to support WC by purchasing through your links, but when clicking: 1) The Samsung Pro Plus recommendation – I was directed to the Samsung US page. No option for Canada as far as I could tell. Damn, but no worries – I’ll just buy the SanDisk. 2) The SanDisk Extreme Pro recommendation – the link directs to a product featuring the same “frustration-free packaging” that the author recommends avoiding.:'(.
Sdhc Vs Sdxc Card
Well, hope this SD card is better than the Lexar 16GB SD one. Those had great memory on them, but became useless once they were in slightly cold weather. I Went to Europe and took a ton of pics and looked great until I returned. They both initially worked fine, when I tried downloading them on the plane, but had to stop it immediately and put my comp away.
A few days later back home when I tried to re-start the process and download the pics, my computer couldn’t detect the SD cards at all!!! Tried sticking them into the camera and the camera would just say “Card error”.
I had over 2000 pics on them from my 1st trip to Europe and had asked around all local data recovery and computer places but they all kept telling me that the cards were fried:(. One was slightly bent down the middle, but it was still intact. In a panic, I did some research on the Internet, and came across a place called Recoverfab in Germany. I contacted Leopold Hiersche (The owner of Recoverfab) and he told me his method of extracting the data once all hope is lost, and the steps on how to get the cards to him for him to work his magic.
After about a week of sending them off, I got the best email of my life saying that all 2000+ photos and 80+ mins of video were saved and he sent me the link to download all the photos and videos, once I paid him through Paypal. This guy is the real deal, and I highly recommend his services if anyone is EVER in such a situation. He saved some memories for me, which I was beginning to think were lost forever.
What about the Lexar 2000X professional class 3 cards? It’s read and write speeds look to be way faster than anything tested here. Was it not available when you did your tests? It has advertised read speeds of 300MB/s. I’d sure like to see your tests on this one. If legit, it seems that these new cards would make this review null and void! The reviews on Amazon are more than 4 1/2 stars by 168 reviewers too.
I’ve used them for photos in my Nikon D610 and D500 and they seem to read and write faster than anything I’ve used before, but I don’t shoot much video so I can’t speak to their worth in that arena. Please review when you can. I read a really surprising comment on a YouTube video just now, that states that Frustration Free Packaging now gives you LESS chance of the card being a counterfeit card, than Retail packaging. Could this actually be correct? I’ll paste a link and the comment in question, below (hopefully the link will survive pasting.) I’ve been too nervous to buy SD cards on Amazon, because my preferred card (16GB SanDisk Extreme) is now only available in FFP (or as they now call it “Easy To Open Packaging”.) It used to be available in Retail Packaging, but now it’s not available that way. So I’ve been buying them locally at retail stores, but the price is much worse than on Amazon. If it turned out somehow that FFP was actually safer than Retail packaging now, that would be worth knowing.
However, I don’t see how someone couldn’t buy an FFP card, open the FFP packaging on the edges, swap in a counterfeit with a nice label, and carefully glue the FFP envelope back up. Anyway, here’s the post: Alexander Kent, 2 months ago: “Frustration free actually has less chance of counterfeit. Because of some of the past issues, now only the original manufacturer can make the packaging upgrade and sell FFP packaging (hence no counterfeit). I am a packaging manager for Amazon and happened to be looking for demo videos, figured I’d set the record straight.”. How much bit rate you have? 4K video as far as I know takes from about up to 100Megabit/s (Mb/s).
Patch For Sdhc Cards Amazon Prime
The speed is expressed in MegaBytes/s (MB/s). 100Mbit is 12.5 MegaByte/s. And when you filming, you are using write speed not read speed. Assuming sustained speed 100Mbps, that is about 85 min. Camera write speed can vary between 30Mbps to 100Mbps, if using under 30fps, max usually is about 50Mbps, which is basically 170min. Check your camera spec for this info. Most of time if you are using already fast card, the problem is in your camera.
Here’s the deal: They tested only 64GB SD cards for the most part because 32GB cards are now more expensive per GB than 64GB cards. What’s more, the UHS-II version of the Extreme Pro still costs more than twice as much as the UHS-I version. And then, there is the fact that many of today’s DSLRs, even high-end ones, still support only UHS-I speeds. And (at least the earlier versions of) the UHS-II Extreme Pro SD card can only write at a molasses-slow 40 MB/s when used in a camera that supports only UHS-I speeds. As such, few people can currently take any advantage at all whatsoever of the UHS-II cards, when used in a camera. Chris, currently have a calibrated 60″ Panasonic VT Plasma.
I watch a lot of college/NFL football, a ton of college basketball, and movies/tv from cable. Considering purchasing Sony 75″ 900e or LG 65″ C7–basically same price.
However, my delima comes from sitting approx 17′ from TV. Also, while everyone raves about black levels I’ve always thought plasma was a bit dull when watching sports. It’s great at motion and I despise the soap opera effect. Would the LG be significantly brighter than the Panasonic? Would Sony 900e match Panasonic TV in black levels? Thank you for any thoughts!
What I’m missing in these reviews is reliability & endurance tests. In my experience, most TLC NAND cards I’ve tried won’t stand more than a year of regular use (in a smartphone everyday for example), due to a low number of write cycles, before experiencing problems. If you really care for your data use MLC NAND cards preferably as they will last longer even though they are slightly more expensive, backup your card data more often than not and always carry a backup card in case you’re out shooting and your card stops working.
All cards fail, it’s a matter of time. So, guys, consider taking endurance as an additional key feature to performance in order to recommend a card.
Are you in need of some more memory for your phone, computer or camera? Then you need to head over to Amazon today for a one day sale! Amazon is running a one day sale on Sony memory products including microSD and full-sized SD cards. There are also numerous different flash drives discounted today at some amazing discounts.
Anyone remember when these were expensive? I certainly do. The sale is good for today only, so you better check them out sooner rather than later. Flash Drives – $5.99, 85% off – $9.99, 71% off – $19.99, 41% off – $7.49, 56% off – $11.49, 57% off – $17.66, 65% off – $14.99, 63% off – $29.99, 40% off microSD Cards – $7.99, 47% off – $11.99, 52% off – $25.99, 42% off SD Cards – $7.99, 60% off – $10.99, 69% off – $23.95, 63% off – $49.99, 50% off.