Best Memory Cards Canon R6 – Real Benchmarks

The Canon R6 is the first of Canon’s full-frame mirrorless cameras to offer dual UHS-II memory card slots. The camera offers a lot of performance with a lot of capabilities, which will require fast UHS-II memory cards.

Buying memory cards for the Canon R6 isn’t cut and dry since the camera offers so much versatility and there really is no best all-around card when factoring in price to performance. Different users will have different needs. Slower v60 or UHS-I cards might be all you need, but some users will need the best and fastest v90 UHS-II cards.

Use this guide to figure out which memory cards are best for your situation.

Must-Have Accessories Canon R6

Best Memory Cards Canon R6

The Canon EOS R6 offers dual UHS-II memory card slots which are great for clearing the buffer quickly since the camera can shoot up to 20fps with the electronic shutter.

While you might be tempted to go with UHS-II cards for video, the Canon R6 has a bitrate of 340Mbps, and while that seems like a lot, when you convert that to MB/s you’re only needing memory cards that can write at 42.5MB/s, which is well within UHS-I memory card speeds.

The catch is, Canon likely won’t officially recommend UHS-I U3 memory cards because U3 memory cards only guarantee 30MB/s write speeds, whereas you’ll v60 cards guarantee 60MB/s write speeds. Fast UHS-I cards will work for video with that bitrate but you should probably get UHS-II cards anyway if you want to use the camera as an all-around hybrid shooting/video machine. The faster performance of the UHS-II cards guarantees a minimum data rate to support the video capabilities of the camera. You probably won’t need the fastest V90 UHS-II cards if you’re on a budget and most people will be happy with the performance of v60 cards.

You can use the dual SD card slots for backup with photos, but you cannot record video with redundancy to both cards.

Canon R6 Memory Card Recommendations

There are various specs for UHS-II memory cards and they run at different speeds. 

To get the maximum performance from the Canon R6, V90 cards should be used since they will clear the buffer the fastest when shooting on high bursts. You will need the same speed cards in both card slots to maintain the rated performance if shooting with redundancy.

For casual shooting or for video, v60 cards will provide a better value to size.

V90 cards can maintain a minimum data rate of 90MB/s, whereas V60 cards can maintain a minimum data rate of 60MB/s.

This list shows the UHS-II memory card and their performance tested in the Canon R6.

Canon R6 Memory Card Speed Test | Benchmarks

This list shows how each memory card performed in-camera by calculating the time it takes to clear a continuous burst.

Canon EOS R6 Specs

List of Canon RF Lenses

Best Memory Cards 4k Video Canon R6

The Canon R6 shoots 4k at 60 frames per second with a maximum bitrate of 340Mbps. This translates to 42.5MB/s. 

It won’t take a very fast card to write 4k video. You could use a UHS-I but you should stick with a v60 UHS-II speed class to guarantee a minimum write speed of 60MB/s. However, if you have extra UHS-I cards laying around, they almost will certainly work as long as they are U3 and fairly modern, especially for any bitrate under 240Mbps.

I would recommend sticking V60 UHS-II cards if you plan on shooting a lot of videos, they have very fast read speeds for when you transfer to your computer, and you can get a much larger size per dollar.

Sony M Tough cards are great, and the ProGrade V60 cards are also great.

Canon EOS R6 Video Specs & Recording Modes

The Video quality and recording modes of the Canon R6 are very impressive and the is a lot of versatility to the way this camera can be used.

There is a very nice high-quality 10-bit 4:2:2 h.265 encoding for 4k UHD up to 60fps. There is also a very high bitrate 10-bit 4:2:2 230Mbps FullHD 1080p recording option. This again is a very competitive 1080p bitrate that packs a ton of data and color information.

You can also record 4k with an APS-C crop without any heat issues for longer recordings.

Record Limit: 30 minutes.
Audio File Format: AAC, Linear PCM

Canon R6 Record Times – Memory Card Capacity

Here are the record times for the various bitrates based on a few memory card sizes.

Use this table to see the memory card capacity with different record settings.

The camera won’t tell you which bitrate it is recording at. You’ll have to match the bitrate and the setting with the chart above to know which setting produces which bitrate. The ALL-I setting will give you a higher bitrate than the IPB settings.

What Size Memory Card Is Best?

If you’re on the fence about which size of memory card you should buy, I will say that I’ve been shooting a lot more with 128GB cards on my lower 24MP cameras. It’s rare that I fill the cards but occasionally at big events they come in handy. Also, they are nice in case you forget to clear off your card and need to shoot for a few days. This will ensure you have plenty of memory to last you through the weekend.

You can use 64GB memory cards as well. I rarely fill 64GB cards unless I’m shooting on the same card over several days.

If you shooting casually Canon also has CRAW and now HIEF recording modes that will create files much smaller than the standard RAW. So you could use these and get way more shots per card.

If you’re shooting a lot of video, you’ll want to start with 128GB cards.

Avoiding Counterfeit Memory Cards

This is a pretty important section I’ve added now to all my memory card tests because it’s actually a problem.

There are people out there that hack the memory controller on memory cards to get them to display more memory than they actually have, then they swap the labels to indicate that fake size.

What happens is you buy a 128GB card, that might only have 32 or 64GB of memory in it. The card will run fine and tell you it’s a 128GB card when formatted, but once you fill up the memory card past the actual memory limit, the card will fail.

To check if your memory card is counterfeit, the quickest test is to just max it out. You should get close to the rated size without any issues.

To avoid counterfeit memory cards, buy from trusted retailers. B&H, BestBuy, Walmart, Adorama, etc. If you shop with Amazon or eBay, make sure you still pick a trusted store to buy from.

Best Memory Cards Canon R6 Conclusions

If you’re using the Canon R6 for a lot of continuous bursting, you may want to buy the fastest V90 UHS-II memory cards to keep that buffer clearing.

Most people will be happy with the performance of V60 UHS-II cards which are also a lot less expensive.

If you’re shooting video and using the highest bitrate, stick with V60 cards like the Sony M cards. If you’re shooting 1080p or lower 4k bitrates, UHS-I cards are fine.