Best Memory Card Panasonic LX100 – Real Benchmarks

Best Memory Card Panasonic LX100

To figure out the best SD memory card for the Panasonic LX100 (Panasonic Lumix -DCM LX100), I put several of the most popular memory cards through my speed test. The results are pretty standard for a camera in this price range and it seems most newer memory cards run at about the same speeds. See the test below.

Panasonic LX100 Memory Card Speed Test

In order to determine the fastest memory card for the Panasonic LX100 I shot in burst mode for a designated amount of time in RAW. The amount of data captured was recorded as well as the time it took to clear the buffer. I took an average of three rounds.

Best Memory Card For The Panasonic Lumix LX100

I ran the same test shooting only JPEG and also RAW+JPEG. The results of JPEG were very close although the Kingston had the best write speeds at 29.40MB/s vs the Sandisk Extreme Plus which was at 26.57MB/s. This makes the Kingston probably a slightly better-performing card. 

Fastest Memory Card

Kingston is your best bet, next would be the Sandisk Extreme Plus, Pro, or Extreme. Usually, the fastest memory cards are the Kingston and Sandisk Extreme Plus. I personally always go with the Sandisk Extreme Pro but that’s just me, but I’ve never really noticed any difference between other brands.

Kingston 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U3 – (Amazon)

Sandisk Extreme Plus 64GB Class 10 / U3 – (Amazon)

Sandisk Extreme 64GB Class 10 / U3 – (Amazon)

Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB Class 10 / U3 – (Amazon)

Best Memory Card Deal

For a speed-to-price ratio, I would say the Samsung, Transcend, and PNY are your best deals. Samsung is a little more expensive but it has a better build quality. Transcend and PNY are great as well. I use them all the time.

Samsung 64GB SDXC Class10 / U1 – (Amazon)

Transcend 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U3 – (Amazon)

PNY 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U1 – (Amazon)

Why I Recommend 64GB SDXC Memory Cards

The reason I do a lot of these tests with the SDXC Memory cards is because they are 64-bit cards. It means a few things, you can get longer recordings on a single file for video, and two, some of the new codecs like Sony’s XAVC require 64GB SDXC cards to work. So this means if you decide one day you want to buy a Sony Action camera, you’ll need a 64GB card. So buying one of these gives you sort of a more future-proof/universal card.

Class 10 and / U1 / U3

Pretty much all new cards are a class 10. It refers to the minimum write speeds and guarantees you a minimum speed of 10MB/s.  The U1 and U3 pretty much is different way of saying the same thing. U1 = 10 MB/s U3 = 30MB/s

Doesn’t really make a difference on many of the cameras out there since cameras like this Panasonic Lumix LX100 have some sort of bottleneck limiting the potential speed of the card.

Best Memory Cards For The Panasonic LX100 – Conclusions

Honestly, if you’re looking for the best SD memory cards for the Panasonic LX 100 for just casual shooting, I would buy one of the better deal cards I’ve listed. I love the Samsung cards since they are solid, but I also love the price of the PNY and Transcend. So be sure to check those out.

I shoot constantly on many different cameras on every card listed here and you don’t ever really notice any speed differences out in the field or on set even with cameras that don’t have the same bottleneck this camera has. What you do notice is the USB 3.0 speeds when transferring to your computer. I have a MacPro with PCI memory and those faster cards can transfer 5GB of data in no time at all. So keep all that into consideration and good luck deciding what card is best for you.