Best Memory Cards Sony A6100 | Real Benchmarks

To find the best memory card for the Sony A6100, we tested 39 SD memory cards. 

It seems like Sony has made the A6100 a bit more user-friendly with the way memory cards are working. It uses UHS-I cards and requires U3 or V30 cards at a minimum size of 64GB to take advantage of all the video features.

Sony A6100 Memory Card Recommendations

The Sony A6100 uses a single UHS-I memory card slot with a top write speed of about 38.5MB/s.

Sony 4k video has a compression of 400Mbps, which translates to 12MB/s. Any UHS-I memory card will work for 4k video as long as it’s of the U3, or V30 speed class. Do not use U1 cards.

The Sony A6100 can use memory cards from 8GB in size up to 1TB or larger. There is no set limit to the size of cards this camera can use.

You can use UHS-II memory cards like the Sony E-card. You won’t gain any speed in-camera, but you can get fast transfer speeds from your card to your computer if you use a UHS-II memory card reader. This is useful if you’re using your camera for a lot of video recording.

Also, see my list of the Essential A6100 Accessories.

Look at this guide to see the newest SD memory card speed tests. Or look at this guide to Memory Cards for Sony Cameras, to see how other Sony cameras are doing.

Memory Card Speed Test | In-Camera Test Results

To test the cards in the camera we do a series of continuous bursts at the fastest speed possible. The time for the buffer to empty is then measured against how much data was written. We repeat this a few times for each card to check for any errors and then get the best results. These are older cards now, but I leave the chart here so you can see the camera speeds and where they cap out.

Even though UHS-II cards are slightly faster, you’ll still want to use UHS-I cards for the A6100.

Sony A6100 Camera Specs and Buffer Questions

A6100 Bottlenecks

There is a small slowdown with memory card write speeds in the A6100. Probably, Sony is only using somewhat outdated hardware like UDMA 4 for connecting with the memory card. This will limit the speed which is why most of the cards are running at around 38MB/s.

The bright side is this makes picking the fastest SD card a bit simpler since they all run at a similar speed.

Sony A6100 Video Record Times

Most of the Sony cameras have the same video specs, including the A6100.

You can shoot 4k at 30fps with 100Mbps, or 1080p up to 120fps.

Here is a list of video record times for the different card sizes and record settings.

Best SD Card Sony A6100 Conclusions

The Sony A6100 was a nice upgrade to the A6000 with new focus tech a new screen a new build and even a slight enhancement to memory card speed.

Use a good U3 UHS-I card and your camera should be fine for a few years before you have to think about memory cards again.