SD card: test speed - so it'll work
SD cards differ mainly in their speed. We show you how to test the speed of your SD card.
Test the speed of SD cards
In addition to the memory size, SD cards differ mainly in their read and write speed. If you need a fast SD card for your camera, for example, you should check how fast your SD card actually is.
- There are several ways to check the speed of your SD card. In the most common cases, the manufacturers already specify a speed such as "up to 45 MByte / s" on the SD card.
- However, you should not always rely 100% on this information. For this reason, there are programs with which you can measure the speed precisely.
- One such tool is HDD Speed Test, for example, which allows you to check the speed of SD cards as well as hard drives and USB sticks.
- After a test run, the tool shows you how many seconds it took to transfer a certain number of MBytes to the SD card.
- If the measured speed deviates massively from the manufacturer's specification, it may be that your card reader slows down your SD card.
- With particularly fast SD cards that can transfer more than 40 MB per second, a normal USB 2.0 card reader is not sufficient. To achieve the maximum speed of your SD card, you need a card reader with a USB 3.0 connection.
- It is generally advisable not to use the cheapest device for a card reader, since these are often the reason for slow transmission speeds.
