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Best Memory Card Sony A6000
  • Memory Cards

Best Memory Cards Sony A6000

  • August 15, 2021
  • Alik

In-camera speed comparison between the all most popular UHS-I and UHS-II SD memory cards for the Sony A6000.

Use this guide to help you find the best memory cards for your shooting style and budget.

Table Of Contents

  • Best Memory Cards For The Sony A6000
    • Top 5 Recommended Memory Cards
    • Memory Card Speed Tests
  • Sony A6000 Speeds Stats
  • Do You Need A UHS-II Card
  • SDXC VS SDHC
  • Avoiding Counterfeit Cards
    • How To Test For Counterfeit Cards

 

Best Memory Cards For The Sony A6000

First things first, there are a few things you need to know before you buy memory cards for the Sony A6000. The camera features only a single UHS-I memory card slot, so you do not need to buy the more expensive UHS-II cards that are tested below.

Second, the camera maxes out its write speed at about 34MB/s. So the difference in speed between high-end and cheaper UHS-I cards won’t be that relevant. It’s recommended to at least stick with the U3 speed class to make sure you get the best performance when recording video.

 

Top 5 Recommended Memory Cards

Sony A6000 Memory CardsThese are the top 5 best performing and most reliable UHS-I memory cards on the market right now. They all have been tested in various Sony cameras and will work great in the A6000.

Card Name 64GB
Sandisk Extreme Pro 170 Amazon
Sandisk Extreme Amazon
Sony 95 Amazon
Delkin Advantage Amazon
Toshiba Exceria Pro Amazon

 

Memory Card Speed Tests

In-camera benchmarks showing the performance of each card as it was tested in the A6000.

The first two read and write speeds are how the card performs in the USB 3.0 memory card slot in the Macbook Pro. Alongside that, we’ve listed the Sony A6000 memory card write speeds. These tests are done shooting RAW with the A6000. Please do not use this data without properly linking or crediting this page. 

SD Memory Cards USB 3.0 Read USB 3.0 Write Sony A6000 Order
UHS-II        
Lexar 64GB 2000x UHS-II U3 272.7 MB/s 244.5 MB/s 33.96 MB/s Amazon
Transcend 64GB UHS-II U3 290.2 MB/s 182.1 MB/s 33.40 MB/s Amazon
Delkin 64GB SDHC UHS-II U3 253.5 MB/s 219.6 MB/s 33.33 MB/s Amazon
Toshiba 64GB UHS-II U3 258.8 MB/s 226.5 MB/s 32.99 MB/s Amazon
Lexar 1000x 64GB UHS-II U3 147.4 MB/s 78.4 MB/s 32.40 MB/s Amazon
Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB UHS-II U3 260.5 MB/s 214.8 MB/s 31.44 MB/s Amazon
UHS-I        
Kingston 64GB SDXC U3 98.1 MB/s 90.4 MB/s 34.79 MB/s Amazon
Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB U3 98.6 MB/s 90.8 MB/s 34.37 MB/s Amazon
Sandisk Extreme Plus 64GB U3 99.0 MB/s 64.4 MB/s 34.32 MB/s Amazon
Sandisk Extreme 64GB U3 72.43 MB/s 54.1 MB/s 34.27 MB/s Amazon
Samsung 64GB Pro U3 97.7 MB/s 78.6 MB/s 33.77 MB/s Amazon
Samsung 64GB Pro+ U3 97.5 MB/s 87.3 MB/s 33.74 MB/s Amazon
Samsung Pro 64GB U1 96.3 MB/s 82.2 MB/s 33.72 MB/s Amazon
Transcend 64GB U3 96.7 MB/s 68.4 MB/s 32.80 MB/s Amazon
PNY 64GB U1 96.5 MB/s 66.5 MB/s 32.93 MB/s Amazon
Lexar 600x 64GB U1 95.4 MB/s 64.8 MB/s 32.72 MB/s Amazon
Lexar 633x 64GB U3 93.3 MB/s 67.3 MB/s 32.50 MB/s Amazon
PNY 64GB U3 96.5 MB/s 66.1 MB/s 32.21 MB/s Amazon
Sony 64GB U3 96.5 MB/s 84.5 MB/s 32.18 MB/s Amazon
Samsung 64GB EVO U1 47.7 MB/s 27.3 MB/s 24.02 MB/s Amazon

 On the Sony A6000, there really is no best sd memory card, they all perform very close to the same in terms of write speeds. There is an internal bus speed bottleneck in the A6000 slowing down the write speed to the card.

What else is interesting is when shooting JPEG only, write speeds slow to a 10-12MB/s range which makes me think it’s capping out because of single-threaded processing. Most of the Sony cameras we’ve tested like the Sony A7s and the Sony A7r give very similar results. However, the Fuji X100T is the complete opposite.

 

Camera Specs

Sensor Size: 24.3MP APS-C     
Memory Card Format: UHS-I      
Video Resolution: 1080p60        
Video Codec: XAVC S

 

Sony A6000 Speeds Stats

Shoots at a burst speed of 11fps and its file sizes are roughly around 25MB.

Burst Speeds: 11fps

To maintain a burst of 11 fps that’s some crazy bandwidth. 11fps x 25MB = 275MB/s.

Buffering

With the buffer, you can shoot 49 Jpeg shots or 21 Raw. Meaning the buffer has something like 512MB of memory.

Your card speed doesn’t necessarily affect your burst performance. Just when you’re done bursting it will take a long time to write those files to your card.

With something like the SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/sec card, you’ll wait about 14 seconds for the files to write from the buffer to your card.

 

Do You Need A UHS-II Card

This camera only requires UHS-I cards and cannot take any advantage of a UHS-II card.

Purchasing a UHS-II memory card for the Sony A6000 will yield you no speed improvements.

 

SDXC VS SDHC

If you want to buy a 32GB version of any of these cards, they perform the same. However, 32GB cards and smaller are SDHC and are formatted Fat32 instead of exFat64.

Do you need an SDXC card for the Sony A6000? Yes, the A6000 now shoots XAVC S footage so you need an SDXC card to shoot in this format. If you don’t shoot video, then it won’t matter.

Side note: You won’t be able to format an SDHC card to exFat64 and be able to record to the XAVC video codec.

Update: Sony updated some of their cameras with firmware to support SDHC with XAVC S video. You’ll have to check if the Sony A6000 firmware included this update.

 

Avoiding Counterfeit Cards

A big problem in the memory card scene right now has to do with counterfeit cards.

If you’re buying memory cards from eBay or even sometimes from Amazon, sometimes you can end up with a counterfeit card.

These cards are often made by hacking the memory controller so the card can report more flash than what is actually in the card. But this is easy to test.

 

How To Test For Counterfeit Cards

After buying a card it’s a good practice to fill the card completely to make sure it doesn’t have any strange issues. A counterfeit card usually will not reach its maximum capacity without failing. Fill your card with video or stills or copy files from your computer. If transfer speeds are reasonable and the card gets close to its rated capacity and does not fail, you should be good to go.

 

More Sony Related Articles

List of Sony Lenses

Must have Sony A6000 Accessories

 

Memory Card Speed Tests Conclusions

We’ve been getting pretty consistent results with these cards. Usually the Kingston and Sandisk Extreme Pro are the fastest cards. We’ve always bought the Sandisk Extreme Pro cards because they last for years and it saves you from having to upgrade in the near future.

When it comes to performance, you don’t really see or notice any speed difference between any of these cards even with burst write speeds. You will however notice it on older cards. Mainly when you go to view playback.

**This website contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you click them to make a purchase.
Alik

Professional editor, blogger and photographer from Los Angeles California.

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