Best Memory Cards For The Nikon D5600

A comparison between all the most popular memory cards (UHS-II and UHS-I) tested in the D5600 to measure actual real world performance. Use this guide to find the fastest memory cards for you needs in the Nikon D5600.

Camera Specs

Sensor: 24.2MP DX-Format / Processor: EXPEED 4 Image Processor

SD Memory Card Type: UHS-I

Video: 1080p 60 fps

Continuous Burst: 5 fps <- For some reason I was only able to get 4. I could not figure out the settings to make it go faster. Maybe it was my old lens with wouldn’t accept autofocus.

Est. Size of Buffer: 150MB

Time Taken To Fill Buffer: 3 sec Shooting RAW (Sandisk Extreme Pro)

Uncompressed RAW Shots Till Buffer Fills: 12 Shots (Sandisk Extreme Pro)

Est. Time Taken To Clear Buffer: 11.2 seconds

Because I couldn’t get the camera to shoot exactly 5fps (I could only get it to do around 4-4.5), it will throw some of these stats off. (except the buffer size) I messed with it the thing for a good thirty minutes, and concluded I’m not smart enough to figure out Nikons cryptic menu system. But I don’t test a lot of Nikons so there are secrets I’ve yet to unlock – like that crazy autofocus system which is what I think was messing me up!

This camera also wouldn’t auto focus with my Nikkor 50mm f1.8 lens, because I guess these lenses rely on the camera body for that and this camera doesn’t have the hardware to focus certain lenses.

Nikon D5600 – Amazon / Adorama / BHphoto

Best Memory Card For The Nikon D5600

General Performance And The Speed Chart

The Nikon D5600 like many of their other entry-level cameras, has a small buffer and also a slow bus speed. You see this in almost every Sony camera, as well as many Panasonic cameras. Not the end of the world, since the camera doesn’t shoot particularly large files. On my Sony A7rII the slow bus just cripples the cameras performance.

Nikon D5600 Memory Card Speed Chart

On this chart, only the column with the Nikon D5600 speeds shows the in-camera performance of the card.

You can see that the Nikon D5600 has a pretty heavy bottleneck because of its slow bus speeds and the memory cards cap out at around 30MB/s. I was also getting very inconsistent results on many of the cards, so for this chart I took the fastest test out of three.

The good news, with these speed bottleneck is it really doesn’t matter which card you buy. They all perform very close to the same.

Also note that the Nikon D5600 does not take advantage of the extra pins on the UHS-II cards, so you’ll gain no performance by buying UHS-II cards.

All USB 3.0 tests done using CrystalDisk – Windows 10, with the Lexar SR2.

I tested only 64GB cards, but the 128 and 256 variants should see very similar performance.

Recommended Memory Cards For The Nikon D5600

I personally go with Sandisk as my trusted brand, but lately I’ve been drawn to those Samsung cards. They perform great and I love their glossy finish. Just don’t use Samsung with Sony cameras. Sony cameras hate Samsung cards for some reason.

Also, for whatever reason, the UHS-I variants of Lexar, Kingston and some PNY and some Sony cards don’t have great performance until you put a few shots on them. Lexar being the worst offender. So if you’re noticing performance hitches when burst with a freshly formatted card, be sure to put a few shots or video on it first. 

Fastest UHS-II Memory Cards

UHS-II memory cards have no speed benefit over UHS-I cards in the Nikon D5600, so I wouldn’t recommend spending the extra money on these cards. But if you have other UHS-II cameras and want one card to rule them all, here are the best cards for the Nikon D5600.

You’ll also want to buy a fast UHS-II memory card reader.

• Lexar 64GB 2000x –Amazon
• Sony 64GB 300MB –Amazon
• Sandisk Extreme Pro 300 64GB – Amazon

Fastest UHS-I Memory Cards

The best cards were the Sandisk Extreme Pro and PNY U1, but in real world testing they all pretty much performed the same except the few cards at the bottom of the chart. With Sandisk Ultra and Samsung EVO you could clearly tell they were slower.

In other words, buy whatever card you like that performs at around 30MB/s+ and you won’t be able to notice the difference. I personally buy Sandisk. But if you see a great sale on any of the cards listed here, don’t hesitate.

• Kingston 64GB U3 – Amazon
• Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB U3 – Amazon
• Samsung Pro+ 64GB U3 – Amazon

Nikon D5600 Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use Micro SD cards in my Nikon D5600?

Yes, you can. I don’t test the micro cards in DSLR’s but they do work just fine. The same brands and models should perform close to the same as the chart above. The only problem I’ve had with using Micro cards is that sometimes you can get a micro to SD adapter that allows the card to wiggle loose resulting in a memory card error. If this happens you’ll need to get a different adapter.

Do I need any special type of card for video?

Since this camera only shoots 1080p60 with a fairly modest bitrate, any of the memory cards above will work fine.

My card is having problems or is slow, what’s wrong?

If you’re having trouble with a memory card in the Nikon D5600, there could be a few reasons. 

• It’s old – If it doesn’t have a U1 or a U3 on it then it’s probably very old and slow.
• It could be a counterfeit card – Did you buy it on Ebay? If so, you could have been scammed.
• It could just be bad – This happens. Send it back
• Some times some cameras don’t like some cards – I didn’t get this problem with this camera but I’ve seen it with other cameras where some cameras from the assembly line just won’t take certain cards. In this case you just have to try a different brand of card.

What size memory card is the best, 32GB or 64GB or 128GB?

Honestly, you can get by with a 32GB for just photos or a 64GB if you like to shoot video. The reason I wouldn’t go bigger than that is because you really should offload your camera and back up your data instead of leaving shots on your camera for weeks. Corruptions can happen and you can lose everything. This is why I like using smaller cards, it forces me to keep them cleared off on my run and gun cameras that I don’t backup regularly.

Best SD Memory Card Nikon D5600 | Bottom Line

Since the Nikon D5600 has that slow bus speed with a 30MB/s bottleneck, it shouldn’t really matter too much which card you pick. For reliability and trust, I usually go with Sandisk, but I’ve never really had any problems with the cards I’ve tested above in Nikon cameras except for the Samsung Evo and the Sandisk Ultra, which are both extremely slow cards.