If you're looking for the fastest and most reliable SD memory card, then look no further, as we've tested all of the latest high speed UHS-I and UHS-II memory cards. Find out how these cards perform in our speed tests.

Here's what 624GBs of storage looks like spread over 12 memory cards. Some of the cards have aged better than others, with some looking surprisingly aged despite being relatively new. We tested the fastest UHS-I and UHS-II cards available to us. To make the most of the high speed available with UHS-II cards, you'll need a camera compatible with UHS-II cards, as well as a memory card reader that supports UHS-II. UHS-II cards can be used in UHS-I cameras and card readers, but you won't get the benefit of the additional speed. On the left, below, you can see the extra contacts on the UHS-II card.

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Here is a list of all the cards we have tested, sorted with the quickest write speeds at the top. We used a USB3 UHS-II card reader for testing. We tested the read and write speeds using Crystal Mark x64, with 50MB sizes, as these are closest to photo file sizes, and ran each test three times.

On to the results, with the fastest memory card at the top:

In photography, write speeds are the most important as this is the speed at which a device, such as a digital camera, can write photos to the memory card. If write speeds are slow, then it may slow down your shot-to-shot time or the amount of photos you can continuously write to the card. The read speed is important for when you want to view the photos or copy them onto a computer or other device.

	Card Tested:	Warranty	Write MB/s	Read MB/s	Average	Recovery Software	Buy
1	Lexar Professional 2000x UHS-II U:3	Lifetime	240.5	261.0	250.7		Buy
2	Toshiba Exceria Pro UHS-II U:3	5 year	205.0	252.7	228.8		Buy
3	Delkin Devices Cinema UHS-II U:3	Lifetime	202.1	252.5	227.3	x	Buy
4	Sony G UHS-II U:3	5 year	238.6	194.7	216.6		Buy
5	Transcend Ultimate UHS-II U:3	Lifetime	178.2	245.8	212.0		Buy
6	Integral Ultima Pro-X2 UHS-II U:3	5 year	73.9	200.3	137.1	x	Buy
7	Sony M UHS-II U:3	5 year	35.0	187.9	111.4		Buy
8	Sandisk Extreme Pro UHS-I U:1	Lifetime	81.4	97.3	89.3		Buy
9	Samsung PRO + UHS-I U:3	10 year	81.0	95.2	88.1	x	Buy
10	Kingston 600x UHS-I U:3	Lifetime	42.9	97.3	65.8	x	Buy
11	Verbatim PRO + UHS-I U:3	Lifetime	35.5	95.1	65.8	x	Buy
12	PNY Elite Performance UHS-I U:3	5 year	31.9	97.4	64.6	x	Buy
-	Sony Memory Stick Pro-HG Duo HX 8GB*		16.18	17.15	16.66		-
-	Fujifilm 1GB M+ XD Memory Card*		2.33	5.4	3.86		-

An important factor to consider is warranty and reliability. Ideally, you would want the most reliable card possible so that your photos are never lost however, if the card does fail, then a long warranty will mean that the manufacturer should replace or repair your card. Although, recovery of images is unlikely when a card physically fails, recovery software can help recover accidentally deleted files, and some of these cards come with free recovery software.

Reliability can't be determined on new cards, as it could take a long time for the card to fail, if it ever does. One thing to consider is how durable the card is and if you look at Samsung cards, for example, they are waterproof, shockproof, magnetic proof and come with a 10-year warranty so should survive much more mistreatment than others, as we found out in our test of one of their microSD cards.

Our top picks:

• Transcend Ultimate UHS-II U:3 32GB - £42 from Amazon UK
• Lexar Professional 2000x UHS-II 32GB - £48 from Amazon UK
• Toshiba Exceria Pro UHS-II 128GB - £221 from Amazon UK
• Sony G UHS-II U:3 32GB - £65 from Amazon UK

Looking for a MicroSD card? Have a look at the Top 10 Best MicroSD Cards.
If you're looking for a Compact Flash card, have a look at the Top 10 Best Compact Flash memory cards.

Find out more about memory cards, in our complete guide to memory cards.

* We've included XD and Sony Memory Stick memory just as a reference point, tested on a USB2 card reader, and you can see why it was a good idea for manufacturers to move away from using XD.

Updated: August 2017.