Best SD Memory Card: DJI Air 2S

The DJI Air 2s drone is packed with a ton of features and some really competitive video recording specs such as 5.4k 150Mbps H.265 recording with various Log options.

To take advantage of the best video specs and features this drone has to offer, you will need to choose the right memory card. This means a minimum of a UHS-I with a U3 rating, but also a card no larger than 256GB which is the maximum capacity for the Air 2s.

If you need help choosing, this guide will cover some of the features and the best memory card options.

DJI Air 2S – Amazon / Adorama / BHphoto

Best Memory Cards DJI Air 2s

DJI has given us some recommendations for memory cards that work best for the DJI Air 2s. I also tested various micro SD memory cards in various DJI devices to see which cards can potentially cause issues and which cards work the best. I have published that chart further down in the article.

Here is the list of my favorites from the DJI recommendation list.

DJI Air 2S Recommended Memory Cards

The DJI Air 2s requires memory cards with a minimum U3 rating. Do not order cards with the U1 rating if you plan on recording video. For stills and photography, U1 rated cards can work if that is all that is available to you.

These are the cards officially recommended by DJI.

DJI Air 2S Pro Memory Card Speed Chart

I tested each card in the Mavic 2 Pro by shooting a series of burst photos to see which cleared the buffer the fastest. This is a list of how each card generally performed with the Mavic 2. I know the Air 2S is a little different but generally, a lot of the DNA of the different drones is likely similar and will likely show the same characteristics with certain types of flash.

DJI Air 2s Memory Card Recommendation

DJI recommends using memory cards that are at least U3 rated. In their documentation, they list the Air 2s as taking cards at 256GB.

You might be thinking that you need really fast memory cards for 5.4k video, but the speed is limited by the bitrate, and the Air 2s has only a max bitrate of 150Mbps, which translates to 18.75MB/s.

This is why you only need the minimum of a U3 rated card since the U3 rating guarantees a minimum memory card write speed of 30MB/s.

DJI Air 2S Micro SD Card Recommendations

Buy cards that are only:

The Air 2s will format and use a 64-bit filesystem. This means the DJI Air will format memory cards to ExFat. 

SDXC vs SDHC Memory Cards

SDXC memory cards can support 64bit

SDHC memory cards can only support 32bit.

U3 vs U1

I use my drones mostly for stills where U1 cards will function fine. However, I found from testing DJI devices that U3 memory cards run consistently better than U1 memory cards and I highly recommend U3 memory cards over U1 even if you’re just shooting stills. DJI officially recommends U3 memory cards as well.

U3 sets the minimum record speed to 30MB/s no matter the situation. Even if the card is fragmented or almost full, you’ll always get a minimum write speed of 30MB/s. If your bursting, or shooting HDR, or bracketing, these faster cards do help clear the buffer faster.

U1 has a minimum record speed of 10MB/s. This means you can see a drop in performance in certain situations which could cause recordings to stop.

While the DJI Air 2S only records 150mbps (18.75MB/s), it needs memory card write speeds of at least 18.75MB/s to operate. Having a U3 memory card ensures that your video will never be interrupted by a drop in speed.

What the new stats written on cards means

V30, V60, and V90.

This is the same thing as class 10, U1, and U3.

V30 or U3

V60 has a minimum speed of 60MB/s

V90 has a minimum speed of 90MB/s

UHS-I vs UHS-II | Why  You Don’t Need UHS-II

There are a few UHS-II Micro SD Memory cards on the market now, you don’t need them. In fact, the old Lexar 1000x UHS-II memory card didn’t perform as well as standard UHS-I U3 cards.

The Air 2S does not have the hardware to support the extra pins in UHS-II cards so you will not gain any speed benefit although they will work fine.

Different Records Formats | Getting The Best Image Quality

The DJI Air 2S has a few new record formats and they can produce slightly different results.

The DJI Air 2S Specs

Record Times

Record times are taken from the Video Record Time Calculator.

150Mbps video will allow you to record for 57 minutes to a 64GB card.

With a flight time of about 30 minutes, you could record the entire flight from two batteries with a 64GB card.

H264 vs H265

With the DJI Air 2S, you have the option to record H.264 or H.265.

H.265

H.264

Common & Uncommon Memory Cards Issues

I’ve encountered a few issues in my  Mavic 2 over the years and some of these problems could come up with the Air 2S, so I’ll detail the problems and the solutions.

No Card Error

If your drone isn’t detecting your memory cards, then it’s likely they are formatted to an incompatible filesystem. The solution would be to format them to ExFat, either in OSX, windows, or even a GoPro will do the job. If you format the memory cards to the OSX filesystem, they will not be recognized by the drone.

Trouble Initializing Memory Cards In OSx

I discovered some issues where after using the card in my drone it would not be recognized in Mac OSX.

I’m not sure why this is but the last place my cards were formatted (before being formatted in the drone) was on a Samsung Galaxy S8. This must-have created an ExFat filesystem that was not friendly to OSX but friendly to the DJI drone and when formatting the card in the drone, it did not replace the filesystem.

If you have an issue where your card from the Air 2s is not recognized by OSX, there is a fix.

You can pull your data off of the drone through a USB cable, then format the card in OSX. When formatting your memory card in OSX or Windows, you’ll have to format it to exFAT. On MAC, the option for a Master Boot Record will work fine.

SD FULL

There was one issue where the remote was displaying that the SD Card was full, “SD FULL”. However, recording to the card worked just fine and there were no noticeable issues on actual performance or writing to the cards. This was only seen once in my tests and we have not been able to reproduce it. It’s likely this was some bug with some firmware that has likely been updated since.

If you get this problem, reformat the memory card to ExFat in OSX or Windows, or take the card out of the drone and re-insert it with the drone turned off, then format it again in the drone.

Best SD Memory Cards Air 2S

Since the Air 2S Drone has a very fast buffer and produces massive DNG raw files, buying the fastest UHS-I SD memory cards will make a difference even if you are just shooting stills. However, UHS-II memory cards in the Air 2S do not produce improved results since the Air 2S does not use UHS-II technology

When it comes to picking the best size memory card, 64GB cards will be the best choice for most people, 256GB cards are compatible but will likely be overkill even if you have three batteries from the fly more combo. Record times roughly give you about 10GB of data for 10 minutes of footage. Non-stop recording for two flights would give about 60 minutes of footage, so choose your card size according to your average record sessions.