Best Memory Cards for the Sony A7 III – 28 Cards Tested In-Camera

The Sony A7 III has two SD slots, but only Slot 1 takes full advantage of UHS-II: Sony says UHS-II cards go in Slot 1, and Slot 2 is UHS-I. In my in-camera tests, UHS-II V90 cards wrote 133 to 148 MB/s, V60 cards wrote 74 to 89 MB/s, and the best UHS-I cards topped out at 68 MB/s. For stills, I’d put a V90 like the SanDisk Extreme PRO in Slot 1. For video, the A7 III tops out at 100 Mbps in 4K, so any U3 card is enough. My A7 III tests are from 2019, so my picks also draw on how current cards perform in newer Sony cameras like the Sony A7V.

Sony A7III – Amazon / B&H

How I Tested

I tested each card in the A7 III with Continuous Hi, uncompressed RAW (the A7 III offers Compressed and Uncompressed, and my uncompressed files are about 43 MB), ISO 100 and a 1/100s shutter speed. I shoot a burst until the buffer fills, then measure the data written to the card and how long it took. I run each card more than once and use the fastest run. I test RAW only, never RAW+JPEG, so the numbers show card speed rather than JPEG processing. I also check that the camera accepts each card for 4K recording. Some older Samsung cards, even though they are U3 and SDXC, are rejected with an error saying they are not U3 cards.

Quick Picks for Slot 1 of the Sony A7 III

	Best overall: SanDisk Extreme PRO V90. The 64GB card wrote 142 MB/s in the A7 III, one of the fastest cards I tested there, and 220 to 222 MB/s in the A7V. The A7 III tops out around 145 MB/s, so it won’t use all of that speed here, but it’s a card you can carry over when you upgrade bodies. Read my SanDisk Extreme PRO V90 review.
	V60 option: Lexar ARMOR V60. It wrote 194 MB/s in the newer A7V, faster than several V90 cards. It also has a stainless steel body and no write-protect switch to break off. A V60 is plenty for video and everyday stills.

What about Sony cards? I like Sony’s own cards in a lot of Sony cameras because they perform so well, and the Sony TOUGH G V90 wrote 143 MB/s in the A7 III and 212 MB/s in the A7V. But Sony has suspended orders for nearly all of its SD and CFexpress cards because of the global flash memory shortage, so they’re hard to find right now, and Sony has had bad cards and recalls in the past. If you find a TOUGH G at a fair price, it’s still a good card. Read my Sony TOUGH G review.

How the Two Card Slots Work

The A7 III’s card speed depends on how you use the two slots, because the camera is limited by the slowest card involved.

• Relay (Auto Switch Media on): Slot 1 fills first at UHS-II speed, then the camera moves to Slot 2 and slows to UHS-I speed. Auto Switch is off by default, so you have to turn it on.
• Backup (Simult. RAW+RAW): Both cards write at once and the slower one sets the speed, so a V90 in Slot 1 gains you nothing. For simultaneous XAVC S video, Sony says both cards need the same file system (both exFAT or both FAT32).
• Slot 2 card: Any V30/U3 UHS-I card, or an affordable UHS-II V60 if you want faster offloads. See the Slot 2 picks below.

I no longer test RAW+JPEG. It slows the buffer because the JPEG processing is usually not multithreaded, which is why I test RAW only.

Quick Picks for Slot 2

Slot 2 is UHS-I only, so any card you put there writes at UHS-I speed. Choose on price and offload speed, not in-camera speed.

• Sony E V60 (UHS-II): An affordable UHS-II card. In Slot 2 it writes at UHS-I speed like any other card, but in a UHS-II reader it offloads to your computer at UHS-II speeds. In the A7V the 256GB wrote 170 MB/s and the 128GB wrote 94 MB/s, both well above what Slot 2 can use.
• Delkin Advantage (UHS-I): The fastest UHS-I card I tested in the A7 III at 68 MB/s. A good choice if you only need a backup card and don’t care about UHS-II offload speeds.
• SanDisk Extreme PRO or SanDisk Extreme (UHS-I V30): Low-cost, easy-to-find cards for a backup slot. The 64GB Extreme PRO wrote 62 MB/s and the 64GB Extreme wrote 48 MB/s in my A7 III tests. If you shoot in Backup mode, the slower card sets the speed for both slots, so the Extreme PRO is the better of the two.
• SanDisk Extreme PRO V60 (UHS-II): Another UHS-II V60 with the same offload benefit as the Sony E. It wrote 175 MB/s in the A7V (256GB to 1TB cards).

V90 vs V60 vs UHS-I in the Sony A7 III

In the Sony A7 III’s Slot 1, V90 cards wrote 133 to 148 MB/s and V60 cards wrote 74 to 89 MB/s. UHS-I cards wrote 27 to 68 MB/s. The V90 advantage shows up after a long burst of uncompressed RAW, when the card has to catch up with the buffer. For video it doesn’t matter, because 100 Mbps is about 12.5 MB/s. Those V60 results are from older cards. In the newer Sony A7V, current V60 cards like the Lexar ARMOR wrote 194 MB/s, faster than several V90 cards, so a current V60 isn’t the slow option the 2019 numbers suggest. The A7 III’s own limit is around 145 MB/s.

Current UHS-II Cards I Recommend

I update this list as new cards come out. The speeds are from my card reader tests, not the A7 III. They show which cards are fast, but the in-camera results below show what the A7 III can actually use.

Sony A7 III Video Card Requirements

Sony lists U3 as the fastest SD speed class the A7 III needs, for XAVC S at 100 Mbps in 4K or HD. Nothing the camera records requires V60 or V90.

Recording format	Sony’s card requirement
XAVC S 4K 100 Mbps, XAVC S HD 100 Mbps	U3
XAVC S 4K 60 Mbps, XAVC S HD 60 Mbps or 50 Mbps and lower	Class 10 or U1 or higher
AVCHD	Class 4 or U1 or higher

4K 24p and 30p record at up to 100 Mbps. 1080 at 24p, 25p, 30p, 50p and 60p tops out at 50 Mbps, and 1080 at 100p and 120p can use 100 Mbps. If you want the best quality at 1080p, I’d record 4K and scale down rather than record 1080p at half the bitrate.

What Size Memory Card Do You Need for the Sony A7 III?

For stills, I recommend a 128GB card. I never use more than 128GB in a day of shooting, and the extra space helps if I forget to clear the card. For video, 128GB records 171 minutes of 4K at 100 Mbps, and 128GB cards also avoid the 4GB file splitting of 32GB cards, which can only use a 32-bit file system. If you record a lot of video without offloading, 256GB gives you 341 minutes at the same bitrate.

Maximum Video Record Times by Memory Card Size

Resolution	Format	Bitrate	32GB	64GB	128GB	256GB
4k30p, 24p	XAVC S 4K	100Mbps	43min	85min	171min	341min
4k30p, 24p	XAVC S 4K	60Mbps	71min	142min	284min	569min
1080 120p, 100p	XAVC S HD	100Mbps	43min	85min	171min	341min
1080 120p, 100p	XAVC S HD	60Mbps	71min	142min	284min	569min
1080 24p, 25p, 30p, 50p, 60p	XAVC S HD	50Mbps	85min	171min	341min	683min
1080 25p, 30p	XAVC S HD	16Mbps	267min	533min	1067min	2133min
1080 60i	AVCHD	24Mbps	178min	356min	711min	1422min
1080 60i	AVCHD	17Mbps	251min	502min	1004min	2008min

Sony A7 III In-Camera Test Results: UHS-II (Tested 2019)

These are the UHS-II cards I tested in Slot 1 of the A7 III, sorted by class and then by in-camera write speed. Where a card was tested twice, the table shows the fastest run. Treat these as legacy results. Manufacturers have renamed or replaced many of these lines since I tested them (Lexar moved from the 1000x series to 1667x, and Kingston has changed its Canvas React cards several times), so a card with the same name today can be a different product.

Card	Class	In-camera write (MB/s)	Data per burst (GB)
Lexar 2000x	V90	148	2.40
Sony TOUGH G	V90	143	2.40
SanDisk Extreme PRO (300MB/s)	V90	142	2.40
Delkin Power	V90	141	2.35
Toshiba Exceria Pro	V90	140	2.31
Fujifilm Elite II	V90	136	2.26
Hoodman Steel 2000x	V90	134	2.26
Transcend	V90	133	2.26
Angelbird V90 MK II	V90	112	2.15
ProGrade V90 (pre-Iridium)	V90	111	2.15
ADATA Premier ONE	V90	110	2.06
Delkin Prime	V60	89	2.01
Hoodman Steel 1500x	V60	89	2.01
Sony TOUGH M	V60	88	1.96
Amplim 1900x	V60	88	2.01
Angelbird V60 II	V60	87	2.01
ProGrade V60	V60	87	2.01
FreeTail Evoke Pro	V60	85	1.91
Lexar 1000x (legacy)	V60	74	1.91

Data per burst is everything the card wrote during the burst. It is more than the camera’s buffer holds, because the A7 III keeps writing to the card while it shoots. It also includes the 2 to 4 extra shots I usually take after the buffer fills and slows down, before I can react, so use it to compare cards, not as an exact buffer size. Older ProGrade V90 cards are pre-Iridium.

Sony A7 III In-Camera Test Results: UHS-I (Tested 2019)

These cards work in either slot. In Slot 2 they run at their full UHS-I speed. UHS-I cards sold today are faster than these 2019 cards, but the A7 III is the bottleneck, so a newer card won’t necessarily write faster here.

Card	In-camera write (MB/s)
Delkin Advantage	68
Kingston Canvas React (legacy)	67
Transcend 64GB U3	65
Kingston Canvas Go!	63
SanDisk Extreme PRO (170MB/s)	62
PNY Elite Performance	58
Lexar 633x	48
SanDisk Extreme	48
SanDisk Ultra U1	27

Sony A7 III Camera Specs and Buffer

Sensor	24MP full-frame Exmor R BSI CMOS
Processor	BIONZ X with front-end LSI
Compatible cards	UHS-I and UHS-II (UHS-II in Slot 1)
Max card capacity	Up to 1TB or larger
Buffer size	1.5GB (estimated)
Uncompressed RAW shots to fill the buffer	46
Time to clear the buffer	9:36

Sony A7 III Memory Card FAQ

What is the fastest SD card for the Sony A7 III?

In my 2019 A7 III tests the Lexar 2000x V90 wrote 148 MB/s, followed by the Sony TOUGH G at 143 MB/s and the SanDisk Extreme PRO at 142 MB/s. The top five V90 cards were within 8 MB/s of each other, because the A7 III’s UHS-II ceiling is about 140 to 148 MB/s. In the newer A7V, the fastest SD card was the Nextorage UHS-II Pro V90 at 225 MB/s, ahead of the SanDisk Extreme PRO V90 (220 to 222) and PNY EliteX-PRO90 (219). In Slot 1, any of the top V90s will run at the A7 III’s limit. Slot 2 is UHS-I only, so a V90 or V60 card there runs at UHS-I speeds.

Does the A7 III have CFexpress slots?

No. The A7 III is SD-only. Slot 1 handles UHS-II up to V90 and Slot 2 is UHS-I. CFexpress Type A didn’t arrive until the A7 IV generation, so if you need CFexpress you’d have to upgrade bodies. See my Sony A7 IV memory card guide.

Do I need a V90 card for 4K video on the A7 III?

No. The A7 III’s top 4K bitrate is 100 Mbps, about 12.5 MB/s, and Sony lists U3 for it. A V60 is plenty and a fast UHS-I U3 card works too. V90 earns its keep with stills, where a faster card in Slot 1 clears the buffer quicker after a heavy RAW burst.

Is a V60 card fast enough for the A7 III?

For most shooting, yes. V60 cards wrote 74 to 89 MB/s in my tests against 133 to 148 MB/s for V90 cards. The difference only shows up when you fill the buffer with a long burst of uncompressed RAW. Current V60 cards are also faster than the ones I tested in 2019, such as the Lexar ARMOR V60 at 194 MB/s in the A7V.

Why does my fast card in Slot 1 slow down when I use both slots?

Simultaneous recording (Simult. RAW+RAW) writes to both slots at once and throttles both to the speed of the slower card. Since Slot 2 is UHS-I, a V90 in Slot 1 makes no difference in this mode. If you want Slot 1 at full UHS-II speed, use Auto Switch Media so Slot 1 fills first and then overflows to Slot 2.

What card should I put in Slot 2?

Any V30/U3 UHS-I card works. A UHS-II V60 like the Sony E is also a good choice if it costs about the same, because it still offloads at UHS-II speeds in a UHS-II reader. Slot 2 is UHS-I, so a V90 there is wasted money. The Delkin Advantage (68 MB/s) was the fastest UHS-I card I tested. Today’s UHS-I cards are rated faster than the ones I tested in 2019, but the camera is still the bottleneck, so don’t pay extra for speed in Slot 2.

Related: Best accessories for the Sony A7III, every lens for the Sony A7III, and my Sony A7 IV review if you’re weighing the A7III against its successor.