SD Card Speed Classes, Sizes and Capacities – All You Should Know
When you want to purchase an SD card, you’d better know what kind of card you need to use. In this post, we will show you SD card speed classes, sizes and capacities which can help you pick out a suitable card for your personal use.
Secure Digital (SD) cards are widely used in different filed to save images, documents, music files, videos files, and more. However, you have to admit that SD cards are not created equally. Different types of SD cards have different components and can be used on different devices.
To better understand SD cards, you should know these elements: SD card speed classes, sizes and capacities. Now, let’s talk about them respectively.
SD Card Speed Classes
It is always used by the manufacturers to define the write speed of the card which can tell you how fast data could be saved to the memory modules of the card.
There are 4 types of speed classes:
1. Standard Classes
Class 2: It is the slowest SD card speed class. The minimum write speed of this class is 2MB/s. SD cards rated as Class 2 are designed for device and activities which require lower write speeds like capturing videos on a standard video recorder.
Class 4: The minimum write speed of this class is 4MB/s. This is suitable to record high-definition content and commonly used on smartphones, tablets, and digital cameras.
Class 6: This speed is pegged at 6MB/s. If you want to record 4K content, class 6 should be the least class of SD card you should consider.
Class 10: The minimum write speed of his class is 10MB/s. It is the fastest SD card Speed class which is suitable for recording Full-HD content.
2. UHS
The full name of UHS is Ultra High Speed.
There are two special speed classes and they are UHS 1 and UHS 3. They are more expensive than the standard classes and their minimum write speeds are 10MB/s and 30MB/s respectively.
SD cards with these two kinds of speeds are specially designed for professional use such as 4K-capable cameras.
3. Video Speed Class
The video class is totally a new one.
The Video Speed Class 10 (V10) SD card has a minimum write speed of 10MB/s. While, V30 is 30MB/s, V60 is 60MB/s and V90 is 90MB/s. The SD card with this speed class is specially used for recording 8K video content.
To know an SD card’s class, you can just look at the body of the card. The standard Speed Classes are denoted as a capital “C” with a digit embedded in it. The special UHS classes are denoted as a capital “U” with a number also embedded within.
Now, you can see the following image to get the details:
If there is no any symbol on the card, it will be “Class 0” which means the card is produced before the Speed Class rating system was introduced. Class 0 is slower than Class 2.
Sizes and Capacities
MicroSD card is the most common size which is always used in camcoders, cameras, smartphones, etc. However, three other sizes are as follows:
1. SD, SDHC and SDXC cards
They are the regular sizes which are also known as Full-Size SD cards. They have the same physical size but, SDHC and SDXC can hold more storage capacity.
In detail, SD can hold max of 2GB, SDHC is 32GB, and SDXC is can hold as much as 2TB. However, 1 Terabyte-sized SD cards are already available now.
2. MiniSD and MiniSDHC
They are the miniaturization of the regular SD card. Physically, they are about half size of the SD card.
3. MicroSD, MicroSDHC and MicroSDXC
MicroSD cards, also known as TransFlash cards, are the smallest SD cards you can buy. They are common used on smartphones, tablets, camcorders, and other IoT devices.
The max storage capacity of MicroSD is 2GB, microSDHC can reach up to 32GB and microSDXC is 2TB.
After reading this post, you must know how to choose a suitable card for your personal use.