The Samsung NX1 is one of the few cameras on the market to feature UHS-II support, but it did not take advantage of the UHS-II bus speeds until the most recent firmware 1.4.
Best SD Memory Card For The Samsung NX1
There are a few key differences in memory cards today that you should be aware of. There is SDHC vs SDXC and UHS-I vs UHS-II.
SDHC vs SDXC – The key difference between these two types of cards has to do with their memory formats. 32bit vs. 64bit. Also, a SDXC card will always be a minimum of 64GB. Today you should pretty much only be buying SDXC cards if you can. The reason is some of the new video codecs require it, especially any of the new codecs by Sony.
UHS-I vs UHS-II – Like the Fuji X-T1 and the Olympus OMD E-M5II, the Samsung NX1 can take advantage of UHS-II memory cards. The key difference is speed. UHS-II can perform much faster. With some read speeds up to 312MB/s vs 104MB/s. Write speeds are a different story. Fastest write speeds I’ve seen out of a UHS-II personally are 180MB/s, a UHS-I card will typically deliver between 80-90MB/s. In camera is a different story, things run a lot slower.
I’ve run all my memory cards in a speed test with the Samsung NX1 to determine the fastest card and if UHS-II cards are worth it. Unfortunately, if you’re not running firmware 1.4 or greater, you will not see any UHS-II speed improvements.
A lot of the cameras I test and review I rent. This was one of them and it will be a few months before I can rent it again to test UHS-II with the latest firmware.
Samsung NX1 Memory Card Speed Tests
These results were taken shooting RAW. Shooting RAW+JPEG or JPEG doesn’t seem to affect performance by any significance.
| SD Memory Cards | USB 3.0 Read | USB 3.0 Write | Fuji X-T1 Write Speeds |
| UHS-II | |||
| Delkin 32GB UHS-II | 245.1 MB/s | 164.6 MB/s | 53.95 MB/s |
| Lexar 32GB 2000x UHS-II | 280.9 MB/s | 181.4 MB/s | 47.72 MB/s |
| Sandisk Extreme Pro 32GB UHS-II | 257.3 MB/s | 109.9 MB/s | 42.21 MB/s |
| Lexar 32GB 1000x UHS-II | 145.0 MB/s | 60.7 MB/s | 33.98 MB/s |
| UHS-I | |||
| Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U3 | 89.0 MB/s | 84.7 MB/s | 51.86 MB/s |
| Samsung Pro 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U1 | 86.8 MB/s | 77.2 MB/s | 49.74 MB/s |
| Sandisk Extreme Plus 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U3 | 88.9 MB/s | 62.0 MB/s | 49.29 MB/s |
| Kingston 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U3 | 88.1 MB/s | 74.3 MB/s | 48.88 MB/s |
| Sony 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U3 | 87.2 MB/s | 71.9 MB/s | 47.63 MB/s |
| Lexar 600x 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U1 | 85.6 MB/s | 60.1 MB/s | 46.29 MB/s |
| PNY 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U1 | 86.1 MB/s | 54.5 MB/s | 46.35 MB/s |
| Transcend 64GB SDXC Class 10 / U3 | 87.7 MB/s | 64.1 MB/s | 46.28 MB/s |
| Sandisk Extreme 64GB SDXC Class 10 U/3 | 71.3 MB/s | 52.1 MB/s | 45.21 MB/s |
Samsung NX1 Memory Card Speed Test Results
Although the Samsung NX1 has a UHS-II interface built into it, old firmware will not take advantage of it.
UHS-I vs UHS-II NX1 Memory Cards Conclusions – There is no benefit to spending more money on a UHS-II memory card for the Samsung NX1 prior to fw1.4. Write speeds do not improve to justify the added expense.
UHS-II Memory Card Speeds with FW 1.4 – I’ve yet to test these speeds. Stay tuned.
From other cameras I’ve tested with UHS-II interfaces the Lexar 2000x was the fastest followed by the Delkin.
Best Memory Card For The Money
The Samsung 64GB SDXC Memory Card is the best deal and It’s one of my favorite cards. I also recommend the Sony 64GB based on these results.
UHS-I
Samsung 64GB SDXC – (Amazon)
Sony 64GB SDXC – (Amazon)
UHS-II
Lexar 2000x is usually the fastest card in camera from my other tests. If you have the newest firmware you’ll most likely want this one or the Delkin.
Lexar 2000x 32GB SDHC U3 – (Amazon)
Fastest Memory Card
I’m going to list the Delkin UHS-II card as the fastest with the old firmware. Although you don’t get a huge jump in performance in the NX1, You will see a jump in performance when transferring the card to your computer via a UHS-II USB3.0 memory card reader. This will change when I test UHS-II cards again with new firmware.
Delkin 32GB UHS-II – (Amazon)
Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB SDXC – (Amazon)
Conclusions
To use UHS-II you need firmware 1.4 or greater. The Samsung NX1 also was the only camera I’ve ever tested to continually give me issues. I had frequent corrupted images, frequent power-offs, and frequent random JPEGs being written. It is summer now so it’s a bit warmer which could have had something to do with it. This camera gets hot!
I will continue to look into these issues, but I think the camera is just young and still has some growing up to do. For now use this chart to guide you in your SD memory card purchasing decisions.
More On The Samsung NX1
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