A guide to SD and microSD card types

Which SD standard and capacity do you need?

The first thing to consider when choosing a memory card is figuring out what type of card your device requires, which can usually be found in the instruction manual or on the manufacturer’s website. This will usually indicate what SD standard the device requires. Both SD and microSD cards share the same standards: SD, SDHC, SDXC and SDUC, and microSD, microSDHC, microSDXC and microSDUC.

The two standards that are more popular today for both SD and microSD cards are SDHC and SDXC. The main difference between the SD standards is storage capacity. If you shoot 4K video, you’ll most likely need an SDXC card since it has a maximum capacity of 2TB, which is plenty for optimal video recording performance. Additionally, SDXC cards use the exFAT file system to support the large files that can be produced when recording video at high bitrates with cameras like Sony’s a7S III. In comparison, files are limited to 4GB in size with the FAT32 file system used by other card types.

For the average user, a 32GB or 64GB card is more than enough. A mid-sized card should be able to capture hundreds, or even thousands of photos and video clips.