February 18, 2015

Best Memory Card for Go Pro HD Hero 4 Black

SanDisk Extreme PRO 64GB microSDXC UHS-I/U3 Memory Card

SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB microSDXC Memory Card

Product Rating Summary 

95% Overall

I have now used this card for years with all my Go Pro cameras, drones and even M43 cameras. It has proven to be solid, reliable and pretty much failproof. I own many!

100%
Performance
100%
Quality
95%
Packaging
85%
Value 
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"What is the best memory card for Go Pro cameras when shooting 4K?"

Go Pro Hero 4

Post updated January 2018: I have been using a Sandisk Ultra 32GB class 10 card which I thought would be good enough. However, I kept getting "card error" messages when filming in 4K or 2.7K at 48/60fps. This is a pain, especially when you are using the Go Pro on a drone which you generally don't check until the end of the 10-15 minute flight. So what is the best memory card for Go Pro cameras and 4K filming?

The above card is fine for most 1080p HD video work and I will still use it with my Go Pro HD Hero 3 Black Edition. But for the 4K/30FPS footage from the Go Pro HD Hero 4 Black, I needed something super fast that I could rely on. Regardless of cost.

After hunting around the web, I found, bought and had delivered today, the:

Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB

It has to be this "Pro" card I recommend and nothing else. This is because after reviewing a whole heap of other microSD cards, most manufacturers hit you with marketing that says:

"Up to 95mb/s transfer speed!"

This is something you may not be aware of...

The speed sounds amazing BUT what they don’t tell you is that this is the READ speed and not the WRITE speed. Bad news and I hope this is something they stop soon because too many people are being ripped off.

Many cards, even some "professional ones" with this emblazoned across the packaging actually have read speeds much lower. At best, around 40-45mb/s with many falling WAY slower than that.

This just won't cut if for fast frame rates or full 4K/30FPS shooting.

The SanDisk Extreme PRO 64GB microSDXC UHS-I/U3 Memory Card is currently the fastest Micro SD card on the market. It has WRITE speeds up to 90mb/s and perfect for what I need. It does exactly what I need it to do too!

  • Pro video performance with both Class 10 and UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) ratings for capturing Full HD and 4K Ultra HD video
  • Industry-leading UHS-I data read speeds up to 95MB/s and write speeds up to 90MB/s
  • Capacities from 8GB up to 64GB to shoot for high resolution videos and stills
  • Durability tested: waterproof, shockproof, x-ray proof, temperature proof

Many other reviewers have tested the speed of this card. They have confirmed WRITE speeds of between 65mb/s and 90mb/s depending on the camera and footage being shot. Perfect!

My Quick Test

To ensure the card was capable, tonight I set the Go Pro HD Hero 4 to:

  1. 1
    4K Video
  2. 2
    30FPS
  3. 3
    ProTune on

I powered it from an external battery pack and started recording. After one and a half hours, it was still going strong so I figured the card was absolutely fine and stopped recording.

I had 1h:30m 4K footage and had only used 2/3rds (66%) of the card. Therefore, I recon on about 2h:15m record time at 4K before the card is full. Whatever, the card clearly works perfectly at the highest settings so confidence resumed. I will be out flying as soon as the weather improves.

Note: 4K (or 2.7K) is best for filming on the drone because I can correct the distortion and crop in and still have some amazing video output to 1080p.

Highly Recommended (especially for drone/quadcopter/UAV work).

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Tags

Go Pro, Memory


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