This YouTuber shows you which MicroSD card to choose for your drone, camera or smartphone. All abbrevations and specifications explained. If you’re in need for a new one for your mobile phone, tablet, camera or for some other reasons and, there are several factors you need to consider first before buying and we have all the key information covered here. Always remember that it sometimes pays to choose wisely. In other words, it’s a steal for smartphone and tablet users or anyone wanting more storage for their Switch, and still a good option for your average DSLR or compact camera. Unless you find the Ultima Pro Premium High Speed even cheaper, buy away.

Despite being rated faster than the Lexar 1000x, the Lexar Professional 1066x actually uses the slower UHS-I interface. This turns out not to be a big deal, though, as we still measured sequential read speeds of up to 157MB/sec and write speeds of 80MB/sec on our 64GB sample, with the faster 128GB to 512GB versions capable of over 120MB/sec. We supply memory for mobile phones and digital cameras specialising in a vast collection of SD Cards, Micro SD Cards and USB Flash Drives. Our range also extends to top brands of electronics, camera accessories, Android accessories, iPhone and iPad accessories, and plenty more. You don't have permission to access "http://www.argos.co.uk/browse/technology/camera-accessories/memory-cards/c:30184/brands:sandisk/" on this server. The U1 and U3 are UHS Class speeds that show the minimum write speed. U1 cards support at least 10Mbps write speed and the U3 cards will deliver at least 30MBps write speed. Note that these are minimum write speed values. It is possible for a U1 card to give a write speed greater than 10MBps, say 15MBps, as well. The Speed Class, that’s denoted numeric value within the letter ‘C’ on your microSD card also denotes the sequential write speed.

Modern devices from smartphone and tablets to digital cameras and game consoles like the Nintendo Switch require storage. Devices with integrated storage typically carry a microSD slot for memory expansion. UHS Speed Class on the other hand indicates the minimum write speed for microSD cards that support the UHS-I and UHS-II bus speeds. Its classes are the following;

These standards cover the speed of the interface between the microSD card and your device (or memory card reader), as this can also limit the maximum speed of data transfers between the two. UHS-I has a maximum speed of 104MB/sec, and you’ll usually see a Roman numeral “I” beneath the U1 logo. UHS-II takes that up to 156MB/sec (with data transferring in both directions) or 312MB/sec (with data transferring in only one direction). As a general rule, it’s always a good idea to buy specific cards for specific tasks. This way you can guarantee the best combination of speed and capacity for your hardware to give you the best possible overall performance.MicroSD comes in 3 formats; SD, SDHC and SDXC, which will determine whether or not the card you’re about to buy will be compatible with your gadget. Both full-sized and micro cards are based on the same spec and each format is defined in the SD spec, howeer the don not work in the same manner. For example, if the card slot on your gadget only supports MicroSDHC card, then a microSDXC card will not work on it. As more devices incorporate the use of microSD, manufactures have consistently improved the cards, and improved the memory available massively; storage ranges from 2GB up to 1TB or more. Additionally, microSD cards have seen much improved data transfer speeds in recent years, a crucial quality as they being to hold significantly larger files. As a result, those hunting for the perfect balance of price and performance don’t need to look any further, and spending just a little more will get you your card bundled with Samsung’s excellent 160MB/sec USB card reader. What more could you want?

MicroSD cards can be placed inside a so-called passive adapters which allows them to be used in ports which are designed for larger storage cards. Most commonly, Micro SD cards can be placed inside SD adapters. This is useful for using a single card in multiple devices as well as using Micro SD cards in SD card readers. One final thing we need to make clear is that speeds will depend on your microSD card reader. The reader built into your average laptop might not be capable of reading from or writing to the fastest cards at their full speed, and we’ve found huge variations in external readers, even those bundled with high-performance cards. If you’re investing in one of the faster microSD cards, grab the matching adaptor from the same manufacturer, or from a credible manufacturer like Lexar, SanDisk, Kingston or Integral. That goes double for UHS-II cards. What if I’m buying for an action camera or dashcam? The Speed Class indicates the minimum write speed of a memory card in MBps or megabytes per second. The four Speed Class are as follows: The Integral Ultima Pro might be cheap, but it’s still capable of respectable speeds. We logged its sequential read speeds at 96.1MB/sec and its sequential write speeds at 87.4MB/sec, although it came in slightly slower on our random read/write tests.

We test microSD cards in a high-speed USB microSD card reader, connected to a laptop via a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A connection. We use a combination of the CrystalDiskMark and AS-SSD benchmarks to test both sequential read and write speeds and random read/write speeds. Surprisingly, it’s easy to end up falling into various traps such as terrible performance, overpaying or worst, the card not even working at all.