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There’s a good chance you’re reading this on a device that takes an SD card, or that you at least have one nearby.
SD cards, especially microSD cards, may be small, but don’t underestimate the versatility, power and convenience. These have multiple uses across all your devices: cameras, phones, laptops, drones, dash cams, gaming consoles, and GoPros, just to name a few.
They may be small, but they can also get expensive fast as the storage and speed stats creep upwards. We recommend taking a look at these key features to help narrow down which brand, size, and class are right for you.
How to Pick the Best SD Cards
Speed and size are the best places to start when finding the right SD card for you. Here’s everything you should know:
Speed: This is how fast the card “reads and writes,” meaning its ability to pull up, copy, transfer, and save the files you want. It’s best to go for at least 100MB per second, and more if you’ll be dealing with RAW photo files or large 4K/HD video clips.
Size: These are measured in gigabytes, and it’s always better to have more than you think you’ll need, just in case. Typical sizes range from around 32GB on up to 1TB and beyond, but more storage space might mean sacrificing speed. As far as physical size, don’t worry if your device doesn’t look like it takes microSD cards, as most come with an adapter to safely go into bigger ports and run normally.
Class: When searching for SD cards, you’ll probably run into different stats and classes involving “UHS,” or Ultra High Speed, which is a way of measuring the read and write speeds. The best one for you really depends on what you do with your device. If you’re just shooting and storing regular photos, for instance, UHS-I should work, even though they provide slower speeds than a UHS-II, which might be better for someone recording video and can reach up to 312MB per second. You may not even need to worry about UHS, depending on which device you’re using and how it encodes the files automatically.
What Are the Best SD Cards?
Here are our picks for the best SD cards to buy right now.
