Best Memory Card Olympus E-M5 II

I’ve run many of the most popular SD memory cards through my speed test for the Olympus E-M5 II. Surprisingly, the results are pretty even, with no particular card shining above the rest. This is common on cameras that seem to bottleneck the write speeds, like the Olympus. The Sony cameras do this as well.

So take the speed comparisons from this camera test and compare them to the USB 3.0 tests to see what will work best for you.

The only thing I didn’t do for this camera yet was to test the UHS-II memory cards. I didn’t know at the time of testing this camera, but it actually works with UHS-II cards.

Olympus E-M5 Mark II SD Memory Card Speed Tests

The first two speeds listed are done with the USB 3.0 in the MacBook Pro. The Olympus E-M5 II camera itself achieves the next speed. 

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Speed Test Results

Almost always, the Sandisk Extreme Pro and the Kingston are my two fastest cards.

This was the first time I’ve ever had the Samsung come in last, although it’s a great card regarding USB speeds and how it performs in other cameras. I’m starting to think some of the variations could have to do with how well the card is seated in the camera. I try to keep the pins clean and never use these cards for daily use, but who knows? 

My top four favorite cards are probably the Sandisk Extreme Pro, the Kingston, the PNY, and the Samsung. Lately, however, I’m starting to like the Transcend. PNY has also made a new U3 card, but I can’t find it in the US, only in the UK.

UHS-II Cards For The Olympus E-M5 II

Unfortunately, I did not have UHS-II cards while testing this camera. This was a major overlook on my part, and I apologize. I now have a lot of UHS-II cards and will test them soon. 

If you’re trying to decide if you want to use UHS-II or UHS-I, I can tell you from my experience that you don’t notice the speed difference between UHS-II and UHS-I cards as long as you are using fast UHS-I cards. I’ve even had some of my UHS-I cards perform better than UHS-II cards in camera. 

From my other tests with other cameras, the Lexar 2000x, Delkin, and Sandisk Extreme Pro are the best-performing UHS-II cards – In that order. The Lexar 1000X card is slightly slower than the Sandisk Extreme Pro UHS-I card. So keep that in mind.

Best SD Memory Cards For The Olympus E-M5 Mark II

Bang For The Buck / Best SD Card Deals

I recommend these cards if you’re on a budget. I like the Samsung because it seems a little bit more rugged. The price of the PNY and Transcend are unbeatable. The Lexar and Sony are also pretty nice cards but don’t always perform great in other cameras. 

Samsung Pro 64GB SDXC UHS-I Class 10 / U1 – Amazon

PNY 64GB Elite Performance UHS-I SDXC Class 10 / U1– Amazon

Transcend 64GB UHS-I SDXC Class 10 / U3 – Amazon

Top Shelf / Best SD Cards

It seems Sandisk makes the best cards out there. The Extreme Pro is always my go-to. But in a close second, Kingston is also really good and sometimes performs better.

Sandisk 64GB Extreme Pro UHS-1 SDXC U3 90MB/sec – Amazon

Kingston 64GB UHS-I SDXC U3 90MB/s – Amazon

E-M5 II Burst Speeds

Rated at 10fps in high-speed shooting mode and 5fps with autofocus or standard burst mode.

From my experience, even with the fastest cards shooting JPEG, it will shoot 10fps for about 10 frames, then it slows to about 7-8fps, which is still pretty good.

In RAW it will shoot 10fps for 10 frames, then slow down to about 3-4 frames per second.

In RAW+JPEG, it will only shoot 3 frames per second after those first 10 frames.

That’s with UHS-I cards. 

SD Memory Card Numbers And Ratings

You might see a few numbers on your card, and I’ll briefly go over what they all mean.

U1 vs U3

When you see U1 or U3, this has to do with minimum write speeds. U1 at 10MB/s and U3 at 30MB/s.

This doesn’t always mean the U3 cards will be faster, but often they are. It means that no matter how full or fragmented a card is, it should still perform at that minimum speed. 

Class 10

Pretty much nowadays, you’ll want a Class 10. Anything lower is old and will be slow. Class 10 also has a minimum speed of 10MB/s 

SDXC vs. SDHC

This has to do with how the card is formatted. SDXC is exFat64, whereas SDHC is Fat32. 

SDXC cards are always going to have a minimum size of 64GB. The exFAT64 file structure will mean you can also record video clips larger than 4GB. 

SDXC is also required to work with video codecs like Sony’s XAVC S. This is irrelevant for this type of camera.

However, as a recommendation, try to get SDXC cards to ensure longevity for future codecs or camera requirements. They’re not that expensive anymore.

UHS-I vs UHS-II

UHS-II cards have an extra set of pins and are often much quicker. Prices over the last few years have decreased significantly, so they might be worth buying now.

SD Memory Card For Video

You don’t need a faster card if you shoot a video on the Olympus. The video data rate is much slower than you’ll get when shooting a burst of RAW files, so any cards listed will work fine.

Best SD Memory Cards Olympus E-M5 II Conclusions

I’ve been testing memory cards on cameras for a long time now, and typically, as long as you buy new cards, you’ll be fine. Stick with the brands you’ll like; you probably won’t notice the difference. However, the Sandisk Extreme Pros are always the best-performing cards with the UHS-I bus. The top-level Lexar cards have been performing the best with UHS-II bus speeds.

As far as U3 vs U1 and SDHC vs SDXC, try buying U3 and SDXC cards now. U1 is getting older now, and newer cameras like the Sony A7rII require U3 and SDXC cards to shoot internal 4k video. You never know; Olympus could do something like this, so you might as well invest in something that will last you a few years.

If I can get this article to rank more, I’ll start doing more tests with this camera. Right now, it’s not worth my time and the money, so if you want to see more tests, like and share this page.

More About The Olympus E-M5 II

I’ve also created an Olympus E-M5 II Accessories List showing some of the better accessories for this camera. I like the screen protectors, and some new half-cases have just been released.