Which SD Card Should You Buy for the Canon EOS R10?

Quick recommendations

If you just want to cut to the chase with some quick recommendations on which SD cards will work well in your Canon EOS R10, here you go.

The short version: the R10 has a single card slot, and it takes SD, SDHC, or SDXC cards. That slot is UHS-II, so an SDXC UHS-II card rated V60 covers everything the camera can do, including the 340 Mbps cropped 4K 60p mode. UHS-I cards still work in it, but they’re the ones most likely to hold you back in the fastest video modes and long bursts.

These SD cards meet the needs of the R10’s features, have a strong track record of reliability, are readily available, and can usually be found in major retailers at reasonable prices.

You can’t go wrong with any of these, and you should be able to find at least one of them available for a decent price.

If you’re after more detail, I have it further down this page.

Canon R10 memory card recommendations in detail

Now, for the more detailed version.

A memory card is an essential accessory for the Canon EOS R10. Without it, you’re not going to be able to take many photos or shoot much video. Somewhat unhelpfully, Canon buries this advice in the manual: “A card is not included. Please purchase it separately.” OK, so which card should you get?

While Canon does offer a little guidance on what types of cards to get, the information could, frankly, be more helpful.

This is where I hope this post helps. Hopefully, it’ll save you some time searching, so you can get out shooting sooner and out taking full advantage of all the features of your new camera rather than spending your time searching the web and trying to make sense of cryptic technical codes. I’ve been buying and testing numerous SD cards for several years and have put many of the most popular SD cards on the market through their paces. You can find my main SD card tests here, and I have a lot more information on this site about SD cards and other memory cards.

Canon R10 SD card compatibility & requirements

My recommendation: Get an SDXC card with a UHS-II interface that’s rated at V60 or V90.

The Canon EOS R10 is a mirrorless camera with a 24-megapixel APS-C sensor. It handles photos and video equally well rather than leaning heavily toward one or the other.

The Canon R10’s instruction manual isn’t all that helpful in providing guidance on what memory cards work well. There is a section titled “Compatible Cards,” but it doesn’t really help much. This is it:

Elsewhere, it does provide more granular guidance in terms of speed requirements when shooting video. And while that is definitely useful, it’s still not as specific and practical as it could be.

So what I’m aiming to do here is provide some practical recommendations on which SD cards to get for the Canon EOS R10 so you can spend less time searching online and more time out shooting. I’m not trying to list every SD card that works in the Canon R10; others will work just fine as well.

As a technical matter, you can use a slower SD card in your R10 if you only stick to lower-bitrate video modes and don’t max out the still photo burst buffer. But that doesn’t make much sense to me. If you don’t plan to use all of the camera’s features, why not save some money and buy a cheaper model like the R100. So it makes more sense to me to get an SD card that lets you use all of your camera’s features, not just some. And that’s what I’m focusing on here.

Detailed recommendations

Here’s a more detailed explanation of why I’m recommending these particular SD cards and the type and performance specs they meet.

V60 or V90 speed rating

The R10’s maximum video resolution is 4K (at 30fps; or 60fps in a cropped mode). And while that might not sound all that demanding, with some other newer cameras shooting 8K these days, it’s the video bitrate where the need for a fast SD card comes into play.

The Canon EOS R10 shoots 4K video with a maximum video bitrate of up to 340 Mbps.¹ If the memory card is too slow for the shooting mode, you can end up with dropped frames, errors, or even lockups.

Canon recommends a card that’s at least V60. If you happen to find a good deal on a V90 card, go for it — they’ll also work well.

One thing worth clearing up, because it trips up a lot of people: the V number is a minimum sustained write speed in megabytes per second, not the big read-speed number printed on the front of the package. A card sold as 170MB/s can still be slower than V60 when it comes to writing, and writing is what the camera is doing while it records. So the V rating is the number to check, and since 340 Mbps works out to roughly 43MB/s, V60 isn’t as much headroom as it might look.

UHS-II

This refers to the type of interface between the memory card and the camera. Most current SD cards are either UHS-I or UHS-II.² UHS-II is the faster of the two, with two rows of pins rather than one. Any of the V60 or V90 cards you come across will be UHS-II.

UHS-II cards are backward compatible, so they’ll work in UHS-I cameras and readers — they just drop back to UHS-I speeds when they do. That’s worth remembering when you go to offload: a UHS-II card in an old UHS-I card reader copies files no faster than a UHS-I card would, which is why the card can feel slow on the computer even though it’s fast in the R10.

SDXC

I recommend sticking with SDXC rather than SDHC in this camera.

There are two good reasons for that. One is fairly obvious; the other is less so.

1. Larger storage capacities. By definition, any SD cards that can store 64GB or more are SDXC cards. And with the high-bitrate and burst shooting modes of the R10, you’ll fill up a smaller card quickly.
2. Smoother when working with video. By smoother, I don’t mean visually of the type that a gimbal or stabilizer offers. I mean smoother in terms of the editing workflow. The reason for that takes a little explaining, but the gist is that when the R10 saves video to an SDHC card, it breaks the footage into chunks that are smaller than 4GB. When it saves video to an SDXC card, it keeps it as one large and continuous file.
   
   Most current SD cards are marked as either SDHC or SDXC. This isn’t a performance indicator, as such. The SD Association, which is the organization that governs the SD card spec, has assigned SDHC for cards 32GB and smaller, SDXC for cards from 64GB up to 2TB, and SDUC for anything above that. But the important part for the R10 isn’t so much about the storage capacity — although that’s obviously important. It’s to do with the file system used on each type. SDHC is formatted with the FAT32 file system, while SDXC is formatted with the exFAT file system.
   
   The key thing to know about that in relation to the R10 is that FAT32 only supports individual files up to a maximum of 4GB. With exFAT, the maximum file size is so large that for all intents and purposes there is no maximum.³
   
   That matters, because the R10 will adjust how it records video. If you use an SDHC card, the camera will save the video in chunks of 4GB or smaller. It’s a process known as chaptering. While it’s possible to rejoin those segments later in video editing software, it’s inconvenient, and the camera won’t play back the segments seamlessly in the camera.
   
   If you use an SDXC card, however, the R10 won’t break up the video, and will save the movie file as one long continuous stream.

For a rough sense of scale, 4K 30p at 120 Mbps works out to about 900MB a minute, so a 128GB card holds a bit over two hours of it. Switch to the cropped 4K 60p mode at 340 Mbps and you’re writing about 2.5GB a minute, which brings the same card down to roughly 50 minutes. For most people, 128GB is a sensible starting point and 256GB is the sweet spot if you shoot much video or long bursts.

Tip: Don’t buy an SD Express or SDUC card. Both might look just like regular SD cards, but they’re emerging standards, and this camera isn’t compatible with those types of cards.

As a technical matter, SD Express cards are designed to be backward compatible and will function in this camera, but the camera won’t be able to use any extra speed benefit, and it may, in fact, perform slower than a non-SD Express card. SDUC cards require a different interface and will not function in this camera.

Canon EOS R10 video bitrate charts

The video bitrate that footage is recorded at depends on the settings you’re using. Here are the video bitrate charts for the R10 at various setting combinations. Note that the bitrates given here are approximate because the camera uses what’s known as variable encoding. It aims for a target bitrate, but the actual figure rises and falls depending on how much detail and movement is in the scene.

MOV: MP4 HDR PQ: Off

Resolution	Framerate	Codec	Bitrate (approx.)
4K UHD (3840×2160)	30, 25, 24	IPB	120 Mbps
4K UHD (3840×2160)	30, 25, 24	IPB Light	60 Mbps
4K UHD (crop) (3840×2160)	60, 50	IPB	230 Mbps
4K UHD (crop) (3840×2160)	60, 50	IPB Light	120 Mbps
4K UHD Time-lapse (3840×2160)	30, 25	ALL-I	470 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	120, 100	IPB	120 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	120, 100	IPB Light	70 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	60, 50	IPB	60 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	60, 50	IPB light	35 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	30, 25, 24	IPB	30 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	30, 25, 24	IPB Light	12 Mbps
Full HD Time-lapse (1920×1080)	30, 25	ALL-I	90 Mbps

MOV: MP4 HDR PQ: On

Resolution & Frame Rate	Framerate	Codec	Bitrate (approx.)
4K UHD (3840×2160)	30, 25, 24	IPB	170 Mbps
4K UHD (3840×2160)	30, 25, 24	IPB Light	85 Mbps
4K UHD (crop) (3840×2160)	60, 50	IPB	340 Mbps
4K UHD (crop) (3840×2160)	60, 50	IPB Light	170 Mbps
4K UHD Time-lapse (3840×2160)	30, 25	ALL-I	470 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	120, 100	IPB	180 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	120, 100	IPB Light	100 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	60, 50	IPB	90 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	60, 50	IPB light	50 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	30, 25, 24	IPB	45 Mbps
Full HD (1920×1080)	30, 25, 24	IPB Light	28 Mbps
Full HD Time-lapse (1920×1080)	30, 25	ALL-I	135 Mbps

Specific practical recommendations

So here’s more detailed information on these cards, along with some others. Any of these make for a good choice for the R10.

Things worth knowing

So why get a good memory card?

A better memory card is not going to help you take better photos or improve image quality. But it can let you take advantage of all of the camera’s features. A card that’s not fast enough to keep up with the camera can cause issues like locking up, dropping frames, and overheating.

There’s also the issue of reliability. There are plenty of junk memory cards on the market. Not only do they have flaky performance, but they’re also more likely to fail. And that means the risk of losing your photos and videos.

The R10 has only one card slot, so there’s no option to write a backup copy to a second card the way you can on the R7. That doesn’t mean you need to be nervous about it, but it does mean the card is the only copy of your photos until you offload them, which is an argument for buying from a brand with a good track record and for copying files off more often rather than filling a huge card over months.

At the same time, you don’t want to pay extra for a high-performance SD card that’s overkill for the camera.

How to format SD cards

When you buy a new SD card, you should format it before use and then regularly after that. If you’re formatting a card that you’ve already been using, make sure that you’ve downloaded any photos and videos you want to keep, because formatting deletes everything on the card.

Here’s some information on how to format the memory card.

How to format SD cards in the Canon EOS R10

It is best practice to always format memory cards in the camera that you’ll be using them in. That sets the card up with the filesystem, folder hierarchy, and, in some cameras, a database file, so that the card is just how the camera expects. That greatly reduces the risk of unexpected errors and unpleasant surprises.

Always be sure you’ve backed up everything you want from the card, because formatting it will wipe everything. (If you’ve formatted accidentally, it still might be possible to recover data from the memory card, but it’s not always guaranteed, and it can incur the expense of buying recovery software; more on that below.)

On the Canon EOS R10, you can find the format function under:

Wrench icon > Format Card

The R10 also has a low-level format function. It’s sometimes known as a full format, and it’s a more thorough and secure process, but it also takes significantly longer. If you’re disposing of the SD card or lending the camera to someone else, it provides a safer option that vastly reduces the chances that anyone could recover anything from it (at least with the normal data recovery tools available to consumers).

I have more details in a separate post on quick format vs full format, but the gist is that for day-to-day use, quick format is the more suitable option.

Full format is better for occasional use in instances where you’re running into performance glitches with the memory card or you really need the data on the card gone.

How to format SD cards with a computer

Having said that, it is still possible to format memory cards using a card reader and computer.

You get a lot more flexibility that way, but also some extra risk if things aren’t set up just how the camera wants them. It’s also sometimes a good troubleshooting step if you’re having issues with a memory card.

There are some things to watch out for, particularly when it comes to choosing which filesystem to use. So I’ve put together guides on how to format SD cards on Mac and how to use the free SD Card Formatter app for Windows or Mac.

Notes & References:

1. The R10 actually has a higher bitrate that’s used for time-lapse video (up to 470 Mbps). But because of the nature of time-lapse capture, that’s not a real-time capture bitrate. So the SD card doesn’t need to record at 470 Mbps, which is why I’m not factoring that in for write speed, but it does mean you’ll need a card with a fast read speed if you plan to play that footage back directly from the SD card. [↩︎]
2. Technically, there is also a UHS-III spec, but it’s extremely unlikely that you’ll run into any of those in stores, and they won’t work in the R10 even if you do. [↩︎]
3. The practical maximum file size supported by exFAT is 128 petabytes. In theory, it can go up to 16 exabytes, but that exceeds the maximum partition size, so it’s not possible to hit that maximum in practice. [↩︎]