There's a good chance that at some point, you're gonna need to buy an SD card.
But there are so many confusingly different options that pop up if you just go and search for one on Amazon.
How do you know which one to pick? SD cards are different from each other
in only three important ways. The physical size of the card, the data capacity,
and the speed. Let's start out by talking about the different sizes,
standard SD, mini SD, and micro SD.
Standard SD was the original SD card, and it's still quite common in cameras,
while you often see micro SD in smaller portable devices,
such as the Nintendo Switch, and the smattering of smartphones
that actually allow you to expand their storage. The good news is that you don't really have to worry
about mini SD anymore, as that was a tweener size
that virtually no newly manufactured devices are using.
It's that awkward in between phase, you know? Kinda stinky.
These two sizes offer similar speeds and capacities,
so just make sure whichever one you buy will actually fit into your device.
But if you want to right protect your card to make sure nothing is accidentally overwritten or erased,
you can only do that on a standard-sized SD,
although you can get the same effect on micro SD by using one of these handy little adapters.
Now let's take a look at storage capacity, which is a little more complicated.
The modern SD spec can theoretically hold up to 128 terabytes on one card.
Wow! But in reality, it's currently difficult
to find anything above one terabyte. The only other thing you need to remember about capacities
is to look for these symbols. An SD symbol without anything appended to it
means you're looking at an older-style card that can only hold up to two gigabytes.
SDHC, which stands for High Capacity, will give you up to 32 gigabytes.
XC, or Extended Capacity, up to two terabytes,
again, in theory. And UC or Ultra Capacity will let you reach
that 128 terabyte mark if such SD cards
ever become readily available. It's not just about size, though.
Be sure to pick whichever combination of letters your device asks for, as some older devices
won't support the new XC and UC cards,
though you might get them to work with a reduced capacity if you format the new card
with the older FAT32 file system. We're now going to talk about speed.
The speed of an SD card is important if you're often using it to work with large files,
such as game downloads, and it can be very important
if you're using a nicer camera, as slower cards can't keep up with recording
HD 4K or 8K video. But the reason it's so complicated
to figure out what you need is that the markings that SD cards use to tell you their speeds
are rather cryptic. So let's break them down. First, you're gonna see a number,
either within the letter C or the letter U. The C is used for slower cards
with the number indicating the right speed in megabytes per second,
while U is for faster cards called UHS for ultra high speed.
And here, the numbers work a bit differently. A number one inside the U means it gets
at least 10 megabytes per second of right speed while a three indicates at least 30 megabytes per second.
But that's not all. UHS cards will additionally have a Roman numeral.
This indicates the bus interface or a maximum theoretical speed
that you're more likely to get close to for reads rather than for writes.
Most cards currently on the market are UHS-1 or UHS-2,
but UHS-3 delivers up to a whopping 624 megs per second,
about the same as you'd get on a SATA SSD. But if you see an EX or Express instead of a Roman numeral,
it means that the SD card supports the PCI Express bus,
meaning you'll get close to one terabyte per second and possibly even more if that card supports newer versions
of PCI Express or uses multiple lanes.
Finally, another marking you might see alongside the others is a letter V with a number after it.
The V stands for video speed class and is just another quick way to show
how many megabytes per second can be written to the card.
V30 is recommended for HD, with V60 a good amount for 4K and V90 for 8K.
You know, it would be so much easier if they just clearly printed the speed on the card itself,
but I guess sexy branding like XC and Ultra
draws people in more effectively. Oh God, our GBSD cards are coming, aren't they?
And thank you for coming to this place to watch this video all the way through.
Hey, like the video if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it, check out our other videos
and comment below with video suggestions. And don't forget to subscribe and follow us,
but just so you know, all the videos are gonna be here so you can just come back here.