Best SD Memory Card For The Sony A6000

A speed comparison between the most popular UHS-I and UHS-II SD memory cards in the Sony A6000.

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

Camera Specs

Sensor Size: 24.3MP APS-C     

Memory Card Format: UHS-I      

Video Resolution: 1080p60        

Video Codec: XAVC S

Sony A6000 – Amazon / Adorama / BHphoto

Choosing The Best Memory Cards For The Sony A6000

To determine the best SD memory card for the Sony A6000 I’ve put the camera through a speed test, which is done by shooting three round of RAW bursts for a set amount of time. The amount of data created and the time it took to clear the buffer was recorded, calculated and averaged to give these results. 

Sony A6000 Memory Card Speed Tests

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 I’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. 

 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 or something 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 the processor speed. Most of the Sony cameras I’ve tested like the Sony A7s and the Sony A7r give very similar results. However, the Fuji X100T is the complete opposite.

Cards I Recommend

I’ve tested most of the current Sony cameras out there and have learned a lot, from the tests and from the community. 

Mainly, Sony cameras are picky.

You won’t really have any issues shooting with the Sony A6000 because it doesn’t shoot 4k video, however, I’ve found most other Sony cameras typically don’t like Samsung cards, some cameras have issues with Transcend, and some with PNY.

This means, the cards I recommend are Sony brand cards, or Sandisk. 

Best SD Cards

If you own more than one camera these cards perform the best on most other cameras, and they also read and write very quickly when copying to your computer via usb 3.0. The time you save is almost worth it when filling up 64GB cards.

• Sandisk 64GB Extreme Pro UHS-1 SDXC U3 90MB/sec – Amazon

Although the tests show the Plus performing slightly better here, consider the Pro just because it performs better on other cameras I’ve tested.

• Kingston 64GB UHS-I SDXC U3 90MB/s – Amazon

Worlds Largest SD Cards

For a camera I can’t see any reason going higher than 128GB unless you never empty your SD card onto your computer. But if you have other devices, like the Microsoft Surface Pro, then these are great. Or if you have a camera with multiple card slots and want a sort of permanent backup these are great for that too.

• PNY 256GB Elite Performance UHS-! SDXC U1 90MB/sec – Amazon
• Sandisk 256GB Extreme Pro USH-1 SDXC U3 90MB/sec – Adorama
• Sandisk 512GB Extreme Pro UHS-1 SDXC U3 90MB/sec – Adorama

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 second 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. So if you’re looking to improve your burst write speeds this camera will not take advantage of UHS-II like a proper UHS-II compatible camera will.

Bottom line is 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 pretty much perform the same. However, 32GB cards and smaller are SDHC meaning they 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.

Memory Card Speed Tests Conclusions

I’m getting pretty consistent results with these cards. Usually the Kingston and Sandisk Extreme Pro are the fastest cards. I’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. But 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.

Please ‘Like’ or +1. Also, all the links are affiliate links. Purchasing your card through one of these links costs you nothing and gives me an extreme small percentage of the sale. It is what funds my ability to do these tests and they will only get better in the future. Thank you and comments are always welcome.

Sony A6000 Accessories

Be sure to check out the Sony A6000 Accessories List to make sure you’ve got all the best accessories for your A6000.