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
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
These 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.
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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.
