Best Memory Cards Fujifilm X-S10

Fujifilm’s little baby beast is upon us with some insane capabilities including H.264 4k video and HD up to 240fps. With all these flashy specs you probably need a crazy fast memory card right? Maybe not.

Use this guide to find the best memory card for the Fujifilm X-S10 for your shooting style. We’ll go over all the need-to-knows.

Fujifilm X-S10 – Amazon / Adorama / B&H

Must-Have Fujifilm X-S10 Accessories

Fujifilm X-S10 Memory Cards

Before buying any memory cards for the X-S10 there are a couple of basic things you should know.

The camera has a single UHS-I  memory card slot.

Do you need the fastest UHS-II cards? No.

The max video bitrate of this camera is 200mbps, which translates to 25MB/s. You can use UHS-II card for faster transfer speeds from your card to your computer and there are a few nice options like the Sony E cards or even some of the V60 UHS-II cards, but you don’t need them for anything other than convenience. UHS-I cards are fine for everything as long as they are U3 rated.

Fujifilm X-S10 Recommended Memory Cards

All the different speed classes of memory cards come at dramatically different prices. While the UHS-II cards will work, you only need a minimum of UHS-I with a U3 speed class to use all of the features of this camera.

UHS-II cards will give you very fast write speeds to your computer which is a great feature to have if you’re shooting a lot of video where you can fill up the cards quickly, but you will need a UHS-II memory card reader.

In-camera speeds are taken from the benchmarks which are listed further below.

The Sony E card is technically a UHS-II card but is priced very competitively so I included it on the Best Cards list. Check all the prices before ordering since sales are constantly going on.

If you need a large card for video, the PNY Pro Elite 256GB performed very well and it’s one of the newest cards.

Fuji X-S10 Memory Card Benchmarks

To see how each memory card performed in the X-S10, we ran each card through a benchmark test. This involves filling the buffer and calculating the time it takes to clear against how much data was written.

Some of the top brands vary by a few megabytes in their speed, but this will not be noticeable with real-world performance. The speed sometimes varies based on temperature and where you are in the flash and how much those sectors are worn.

This table includes USB-C speeds as well as the in-camera performance. With this table, you can sort and find the fastest SD memory cards.

Do This When You First Buy Your Memory Card

Since counterfeit memory cards are a thing, it’s a good idea to check to see if your new card is ok and not showing any signs of being counterfeit.

Counterfeit cards are often made by hacking the memory controller of a card to report to your computer or camera a different capacity than the card really is. So you may buy a 128GB card that actually only has 64GB of flash in it. You’ll go and shoot for months or weeks without any issue, until one day when you fill-up the card past that 64GB point, and boom, total card failure.

To check for this is easy. Just fill your card completely the day you get it. If it performs well and is running at a decent speed with USB read and write rates based on my benchmarks above, you should be good to go.

Best Memory Cards For Video Fujifilm X-S10

Choosing the best memory card for video depends on what bitrate you plan on shooting with. 

200Mbps = 25MB/s

100Mbps = 12.5Mb/s

V60 cards are the best bang for the buck and should work fine for everything. While you don’t technically need them for good in-camera performance, they offer quick file transfer speeds from your card to your computer if you have a UHS-II reader.

The high-end U3 cards are great for everything else. They’ll let you shoot at the high bitrate of 200mbps and they’re also great for shooting photos and clearing the buffer quickly. You’ll just get slower transfer speeds from your card to your computer which may or may not bother you.

What Size Memory Card To Buy

Casual shooters will be fine with a 64GB card. However, I’ve been liking 128GB cards as it allows me to go a few days without clearing off my cards. Or I can leave some files on my cards from the previous day as everything on my computer backups to my server.

Video shooters will likely need to start with a 128GB card if you shoot on the higher 200Mbps bitrates. Unless you’re just vlogging and making shorter clips.

Check my memory card capacity bitrate calculator to see how much time you can record at each bitrate per card size.

Best SD Cards Fujifilm X-S10 Conclusions

Finding the right memory card for your shooting style can be a little tricky, but this guide should make that easier and hopefully allow you to save money and headaches.

If you just don’t care and want the absolute best sd cards that can do anything, stick with the U3 UHS-I cards. Sandisk, Sony, Kingston, Prograde are all great cards. Fujifilm’s firmware and hardware is great and can handle pretty much any of the popular brands without any issues.

You definitely don’t need UHS-II cards for this camera and if you want to buy them for faster transfer speeds, stick with the V60 cards, or the Sony E card.