MACBOOK PRO SD CARD READER SPPED FULL
MACBOOK PRO SD CARD READER SPPED WINDOWS

It takes a little over two minutes with the and Aero 17 to copy a 34GB file to the desktop. With a file this large, we now see why having a high-speed SD card reader is so valuable. As with our still image test, we take an average of manually timed runs with reboots in between. The camera uses the insanely inefficient MJPEG codec at a 500Mbps bit rate, which produced a whopping 34GB file. Our last test created a nine-minute video with the EOS 5D Mk IV, using its 4K video setting. The higher-performance card readers all track very closely, the Xenia 15 achieves an acceptable 47 seconds, and the G5 15 SE strolls past the finish line the next day. The results largely mirror our read tests using Crystal Disk Mark 7. We also manually trimmed the laptop’s internal SSDs before testing was conducted. We performed the test three times, with reboots between runs to remove OS caching from equation.

MACBOOK PRO SD CARD READER SPPED WINDOWS

We manually timed how long it took to copy the files to the Windows desktop of each laptop. To simulate that we took a folder of 266 JPEG and RAW files totalling 3.4GB, shot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV.

The most common method is to shoot photos or video to an SD card and then copy the contents to your laptop for editing in the field. Writing to an SD card from a laptop isn’t something most people do. Meanwhile, the G5 15 SE and Xenia 15 are far, far behind the pack. The SanDisk Extreme Pro card reader also does a fine job. Writing to the cards is slower for the XPS 15 and Aero 17 and largely a tie. The has a decent edge, but it’s likely gated by the fact that we only have access to a UHS-II card for our testing. The winner of this, although not by the margin you’d hope for, is the Dell XPS 15 9500, with its UHS-III-rated RealTek card reader hooked up to the PCIe bus. Our control, the SanDisk Extreme Pro UHS-II reader, also can hit a decent 246MBps read speed. We make that assumption because clearly the Aero 17 on USB 3.0 with its RealTek UHS-II reader can easily reach 262MBps read speeds. Because USB 3.0 can reach speeds of 5Gbps or 625MBps on paper, we know it’s not the USB 3.0 interface. We can only assume that the Xenia 15 uses a UHS-I reader rated for 104MBps transfer speeds. The Xenia 15 highlights the other issue that matters for a laptop’s SD card reader: It’s not just the interface, it’s also what the host card reader is rated for.įor the Xenia 15, we couldn’t find anything other than that it’s a RealTek card reader on USB 3.0. U3 has largely been supplanted by the newer and slightly less confusing “V” video speed class mark.)Īfter the Dell, the XPG Xenia 15 doubles the performance of the G5 15 SE with about 91MBps read speeds. Yes, they seriously have U3 and UHS-III which don’t mean the same thing. U3 refers to the card’s “UHS Speed Class” mark for video performance of a camera and card. (And no, don’t confuse UHS-III (the bus) with the U3 symbol. Searching just last week, we saw no signs of a UHS-III card for sale.

MACBOOK PRO SD CARD READER SPPED FULL

If you’re wondering why we’re not using an even faster SD card using the newer UHS-III bus, it’s because we couldn’t find a card that even supported the newer interface, which takes speeds to 312MBps in full duplex mode and 624MBps in half duplex mode. The SanDisk Extreme Pro SD Card is rated for read speeds right up to the limit of UHS-II at 300MBps with write speeds rated at 260MBps. We used a 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro card rated for 300MBps reads and 260MBps writes for our testing. We formatted the card in exFAT, which has seemingly become the standard for most large-capacity SD media. The UHS-II bus can hit 312MBps in full duplex mode and 624MBps in half-duplex mode. The card is a UHS-II card, meaning it rides on the Ultra High Speed II bus and features a second row of contact pins on the back to hit the higher performance ratings of the interface.

You could see if it goes faster on another mac/PC, but this will probably not be terribly useful, if you don't have good way to transfer the images from that mac/PC to the intended mac.Because this test would be pointless without a fast SD card, we used a 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card. The transfer may speed up if you're lucky, as the initial estimate could be wrong. Should I just let it do it's thing for 7 hours?

These things don't really matter for data storage, so you may as well use exFAT, to make it easier to transfer data between macs and PCs. HFS is necessary to support some more advanced filesystem features needed for OS installs and Time Machine HDs. The simplest choice is to stick with whatever the SD card is currently using.ĮxFAT should be better than FAT, especially when shooting video, considering the 4GB file size limit. Which of these formatting options is best for shooting mostly photos (sometimes video) and then putting them on my macbook? Probably exFAT?

Macbook pro sd card reader spped