MicroSD cards are becoming more widely adopted, on everything from action cameras to phones to video game consoles. But you probably shouldn't use one in your dedicated photographic camera, at to the lowest degree non if it doesn't accept a MicroSD card slot.

Why? It'due south all nigh the "sleeve," the little plastic adapter that comes with nigh every single MicroSD card sold at retailers. Information technology's handy if yous need to read the contents of the MicroSD menu on a laptop or desktop with no defended MicroSD slot, only information technology isn't designed for constant use. Information technology is, frankly, inexpensive, and information technology's probably slowing down the write speed of your camera.

Let's step back a bit. Modernistic cameras deal with huge amounts of data: xv+ megapixel images, as well as HD and 4K video at 60 frames per second or higher. Full-sized cameras, dissimilar smartphones, don't have much in the way of internal storage—they have to write it all to a flash storage bill of fare right abroad. The more images and video you lot're taking every second, the faster you need your photographic camera to write data.

That'southward why the "performance" of a memory card is then important: those extra labels like "Class 10" and "UHS-3" all deal with the maximum corporeality of data the card tin can handle for reading and writing at any given moment. When yous buy a speedy and expensive MicroSD carte, the carte du jour itself tin can handle that data throughput without any problems, merely the same can't be said for the SD adapter sleeve that came in the bundle.

The sleeve should technically be able to handle the same speedy data transfer equally the tiny carte du jour—the electrical contacts are basically just miniature extension cables. And indeed, some of the sleeves I've tested can score the aforementioned on drive speed tests as the unaided MicroSD cards that they're housing. Merely when used with a loftier-operation camera, the extra steps in the writing process tiresome down the operation.

A applied example: my Sony Alpha A6000 tin can shoot half dozen 24-megapixel images per 2nd. At high shutter speeds, information technology sounds like a footling plastic automobile gun. But that's an enormous amount of data, somewhere between 20 and 100 megabytes every 2d, depending on the contents of the image and the quality setting. When the relatively small memory buffer of the camera's ain hardware runs out, it needs a super-fast SD bill of fare to take full advantage of the hardware'southward capabilities.

My go-to carte is this SanDisk Ultra SDXC. It'due south rated for 80MB/s read speed—SanDisk doesn't advertise the write speed, but testing information technology on my PC gives me results of around xl MB/southward. With the camera'due south shutter speed set up below the shots per second maximum, information technology takes well-nigh 5 to half-dozen seconds of maximum speed shooting before the photographic camera has to tedious down to keep writing, about 55-60 images.

I also have a massive Samsung 256 GB EVO Plus MicroSD card, which normally lives in my phone. Information technology'due south even faster than the full-sized SanDisk SD card, with a write speed of about 60 MB/s—so technically, if I put it in my camera, I should be able to have fifty-fifty more full-speed shots before seeing a slowdown. But because it's MicroSD and not SD, it needs the adapter sleeve. Despite the superior write speed cheers to its U3 classification, the camera begins to tiresome downward after but three seconds and nigh 35 photos. The merely variable is the adapter sleeve, which tin't keep up with either the camera or the card information technology's belongings.

In that location'south zero wrong with using MicroSD cards in devices that are designed for them. And to be honest, most users who use the smaller cards with adapter sleeves won't notice the difference, or won't notice oftentimes. Just if you lot bought your DSLR or mirrorless photographic camera for fast, reliable operation, you should buy a separate bill of fare that's fabricated specifically for its format—full-sized SD for most models on the market today. They're quite inexpensive at the moment, and the more reliable performance is worth information technology.