{"id":22362,"date":"2016-12-21T21:55:43","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T13:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/?p=22362"},"modified":"2017-02-25T20:38:18","modified_gmt":"2017-02-25T12:38:18","slug":"benchmarking-memory-cards","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/2016\/12\/21\/benchmarking-memory-cards\/","title":{"rendered":"Benchmarking Memory Cards"},"content":{"rendered":"

Memory cards are a dime a dozen these days, with prices coming so low and capacity limits far outreaching camera sensor image resolutions. In fact, it’s quite common for new cameras to come bundled with Secure Digital memory cards. These freebies are fine for single shot or casual use, but if you’re thinking of firing shots in RAW in quick succession or even in drive mode, they’re just too slow.<\/p>\n

I’ve accumulated a small mountain of memory cards over the years now, so figured it’s time to do a simple benchmark cycle of selected cards. This isn’t a scientifically grounded test by any means, but it does give a rough indication of where some common memory cards lie in along the performance spectrum.<\/p>\n

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Clockwise from top-left: SanDisk Extreme Pro, SanDisk Extreme, SanDisk Ultra, SanDisk SDHC, and Panasonic SDHC.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Test environment: using the Aftershock S17, and CrystalDiskMark v5<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SanDisk Extreme Pro SD 32GB<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I bought a couple of these for the E-M5 several years ago. They were quite pricey back then, and while prices have come down quite a bit<\/a>, they still command a premium over other cards. There are better performing cards than these now, but they are still worth the money you’ll plonk for them from cost\/GB against the performance you get.<\/p>\n

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SanDisk Extreme Pro SD 32GB<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SanDisk Extreme SD 64GB<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

The cheaper and supposedly slightly less quick sibling of the Extreme Pro. This was picked up well after I’d bought the Extreme Pros and mostly for the X70. Interestingly, the 4K performance surpasses the Pro cards:<\/p>\n

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SanDisk Extreme SD 64GB<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SanDisk Ultra SD 16GB<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

This one’s a freebie card from some years back:<\/p>\n

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SanDisk Ultra SD 16GB<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Panasonic SD 16GB<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Another freebie that came with the Panasonic LX100 that was sold away earlier this year.<\/p>\n

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Panasonic SD 16GB<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

SanDisk SDHC SD 16GB<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Yet another pretty old freebie and slow as molasses.<\/p>\n

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SanDisk SDHC SD 16GB<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Memory cards are a dime a dozen these days, with prices coming so low and capacity limits far outreaching camera sensor image resolutions. In fact, it’s quite common for new cameras to come bundled with Secure Digital memory cards. These<\/p>\n

Read More Benchmarking Memory Cards<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22377,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-photography-cameras","category-toys-technology","wpcat-13-id","wpcat-16-id"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/blog-2016-photography-OMDC1057-sdcards.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22377"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chekyang.com\/musings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}