Ranking summary

Choosing a new smartphone or camera is still too easy for you? You can hang it up at the latest when it comes to accessories. Countless memory cards and card readers are for sale, we have tested products from various categories and compared them.

We're especially proud of our extensive camera database with dozens of memory cards tested with each camera. Being it SDHC and SDXC cards or CompactFlash for more advanced users. But also the transfer from a memory card to your PC or Mac should be done quickly as possible. So don't forget a fast card reader.

All product groups we've tested

Cardreader

There are several competing memory card standards in the professional segment, but the most promising candidate for the next few years seems to be the CompactFlash descendant CFexpress. With speeds of up to 4 GB/s, the standard surpasses the old CompactFlash by a factor of 24! Even the S-ATA-based CFast 2.0 with a maximum of 600 MB/s is left behind. The problem is that not every card reader can reach such speeds, especially since widespread tran...

Cardreader

Found a fast memory card? Nice! But a fast memory card should alsways be combined with a fast card reader. Otherwise the card reader in your PC, Mac or Notebook becomes a bottleneck. We're testing popular card readers and picked the best ones. Fortunately, there is no need for large investments anymore. Card readers with support for the UDMA7 standard can be found for about 20US$, enabling speeds of up to 160MB/s. At the same price point, there ...

Cardreader

Found a fast memory card? Nice! But a fast memory card should alsways be combined with a fast card reader. Otherwise the card reader in your PC, Mac or Notebook becomes a bottleneck. We're testing popular card readers and picked the best ones. Fortunately, there is no need for large investments nowadays. Card readers with support for UHS-II transmission standard can be found for less than 10US$, enabling speeds of well above 200MB/s. For 20-30US...

CompactFlash memory cards

Obviously, we can't test all memory cards with all digital cameras ever released. But we can try to derive a representative mean value from our large database. So please have a look at our CompactFlash leaderboard down below. The average consist of 25 percent card reader measurements (read speed) and 75 percent DSLR camera measurements during continuous shooting (write speed). Modern CF cards with VPG certification also receive a logo on the res...

microSDHC & microSDXC cards

Especially users of Android based smartphones often have the opportunity to expand the little internal memory with a microSD card. Models that are also suitable for storing and running apps (Android Adoptable Storage) are marked with the icon in the table underneath. Owners of action cams and drones do not have to dig through specifications too: Symbols for memory cards with - and -Video capabilities can be found directly next to the product nam...

SDHC & SDXC cards

Obviously, we can't test all memory cards with all digital cameras ever released. But we can try to derive a representative mean value from our large database. So please have a look at our SDHC and SDXC leaderboard down below. Of course, this average should also be as future-proof as possible in todays high-tech world. That's why we decided to weight the results of more recent camera models (e.g. with UHS-II support) higher than normal, 'up-to-d...