MicroSD cards are condign more widely adopted, on everything from action cameras to phones to video game consoles. Only yous probably shouldn't use 1 in your dedicated camera, at least not if it doesn't accept a MicroSD bill of fare slot.

Why? It'south all about the "sleeve," the little plastic adapter that comes with almost every single MicroSD carte du jour sold at retailers. It'due south handy if you need to read the contents of the MicroSD card on a laptop or desktop with no dedicated MicroSD slot, only information technology isn't designed for constant utilize. Information technology is, frankly, cheap, and it'southward probably slowing down the write speed of your photographic camera.

Let'south pace back a fleck. Modernistic cameras deal with huge amounts of data: 15+ megapixel images, also as Hard disk drive and 4K video at sixty frames per 2d or higher. Full-sized cameras, unlike smartphones, don't have much in the way of internal storage—they have to write it all to a wink storage card correct away. The more images and video you're taking every second, the faster you need your photographic camera to write data.

That'south why the "performance" of a memory carte du jour is so of import: those extra labels like "Course 10" and "UHS-3" all deal with the maximum amount of data the card tin can handle for reading and writing at whatsoever given moment. When you lot buy a speedy and expensive MicroSD bill of fare, the card itself tin can handle that data throughput without any problems, just the same can't exist said for the SD adapter sleeve that came in the bundle.

The sleeve should technically exist able to handle the same speedy information transfer as the tiny card—the electrical contacts are basically just miniature extension cables. And indeed, some of the sleeves I've tested can score the same on drive speed tests as the unaided MicroSD cards that they're housing. But when used with a loftier-operation camera, the actress steps in the writing process ho-hum downward the performance.

A applied example: my Sony Alpha A6000 can shoot half-dozen 24-megapixel images per second. At high shutter speeds, it sounds like a picayune plastic automobile gun. But that'due south an enormous corporeality of data, somewhere betwixt xx and 100 megabytes every 2nd, depending on the contents of the prototype and the quality setting. When the relatively small memory buffer of the camera's own hardware runs out, information technology needs a super-fast SD card to accept full advantage of the hardware's capabilities.

My go-to carte is this SanDisk Ultra SDXC. Information technology's rated for 80MB/southward read speed—SanDisk doesn't advertise the write speed, but testing it on my PC gives me results of around 40 MB/due south. With the camera's shutter speed fix below the shots per second maximum, it takes about five to six seconds of maximum speed shooting before the photographic camera has to slow downwards to keep writing, about 55-60 images.

I likewise have a massive Samsung 256 GB EVO Plus MicroSD carte du jour, which normally lives in my phone. It'southward even faster than the full-sized SanDisk SD card, with a write speed of about 60 MB/south—so technically, if I put it in my camera, I should exist able to take even more full-speed shots before seeing a slowdown. Just considering it'southward MicroSD and non SD, information technology needs the adapter sleeve. Despite the superior write speed thanks to its U3 classification, the photographic camera begins to slow down after just three seconds and well-nigh 35 photos. The only variable is the adapter sleeve, which can't go on upward with either the camera or the carte it's property.

At that place's zilch incorrect with using MicroSD cards in devices that are designed for them. And to be honest, near users who use the smaller cards with adapter sleeves won't notice the departure, or won't notice often. Simply if you bought your DSLR or mirrorless photographic camera for fast, reliable functioning, you should buy a split menu that'south fabricated specifically for its format—full-sized SD for most models on the market today. They're quite cheap at the moment, and the more reliable operation is worth it.