AKASO Brave 8 SD Card Recommendations

The AKASO Brave 8 doesn’t come with a memory card as standard. Unless you happen to pick up a special bundle with accessories that some retailers put together, you’ll most likely have to buy a memory card separately.

But which one?

An SD card that’s too slow will limit which of the camera’s features you can use. At the same time, there’s no need to pay top dollar for the fastest microSD cards that money can buy.

So here are some practical recommendations for which SD cards to get for the Brave 8. I have some quick recommendations at the top, with more detail in the section below.

Quick Recommendations

• SanDisk Extreme V30
• Samsung EVO Select V30
• Lexar 1066 Silver V30

Any of these make for a good choice. If you’d like more detailed recommendations or cards from other brands or different models, you can find them below.

AKASO Brave 8 SD Card Requirements

The Brave 8’s user manual isn’t especially helpful in providing guidance on which SD card to buy. This is what it says:

1. Use memory cards that meet U3 grade.
2. To keep your memory card in good condition, please format the memory card in the camera before using it. (Reformatting will delete all your data, so be sure to back up your photos and videos).
3. Support memory card capacity maximum of 512GB.
4. The FAT32 format memory card will stop recording when the storage of each file exceeds 4GB and start to record again on a new file.

That isn’t terrible guidance–in fact, it’s better than some camera manufacturers provide–but it also falls short. Which is why I’ve put together these recommendations–to provide some practical guidance, in the hope you can spend less time searching and more time shooting.

Detailed Recommendations on AKASO Brave 8 SD Cards

First, the basics.

The AKASO Brave 8 takes microSD cards. That’s the smaller, thumbnail-size card rather than the larger SD card format. There’s a single slot, so you can use one card at a time.

Why Do You Need a Fast SD Card in the AKASO Brave 8?

Fast memory cards don’t make you a better photographer or improve image quality, but a card that’s fast enough for the camera will let you take full advantage of all the camera’s features.

If you try using a card that’s too slow, you might run into issues when recording video. If the card can’t keep up with the data stream from the camera, it can lead to errors, stopped recordings, dropped frames, or lockups.

The most demanding shooting modes on the Brave 8 are 4K and 2.7K video and the rapid burst mode with the 48MP photos. If you’re not using those modes, you can get away with slower cards. But then, why would you want to limit which features you can use? Thankfully, it’s not hard to find a good SD card for the Brave 8.

Speed Measures Explained

A common source of confusion with the speed of memory cards is the difference between Mb/s and MB/s (or Mbps and MBps). It’s a little thing, but it matters.

Video bitrates are conventionally measured in megabits per second, which is sometimes written as Mbps or Mb/s. The speed of memory cards is conventionally measured in megabytes per second, which is written as MBps or MB/s. There are 8 megabits in 1 megabyte. So 60Mb/s (megabits per second) is equivalent to 7.5 MB/s (megabytes per second).

Unfortunately, that’s not the end of the story. It would be nice and easy if that meant that you could just make sure your card had a write speed faster than 7.5 MB/s, but there are other factors that come into play, including inflated manufacturer speed ratings, sustained speeds vs peak speeds, and the role and overhead of host devices and connections. All of this means that it’s best to stick to cards that are known to work rather than try to cut it too fine with measurements.

What’s the Difference Between microSDHC and microSDXC Cards?

The SDHC and SDXC parts don’t refer to a performance rating. They refer to the kind of storage formatting they use (microSDHC cards use FAT32; microSDXC cards use exFAT). These are specifications adopted by the SD Association. Technically, the distinction doesn’t refer to the storage capacity of the card, but in practice, SDXC applies to cards that are 64GB and larger, while SDHC applies to cards between 4GB and 32GB.

The Brave 8 is compatible with both the microSDHC and microSDXC formats, so you can use either. But because the high-bitrate video modes burn through storage space, you’ll most likely be focusing on cards that carry the microSDXC label.

More specifically:

microSDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) is a design specification that refers to SD cards that are between 4GB and 32GB in capacity and formatted with the FAT32 filesystem. FAT32 supports individual files up to a maximum of 4GB.

microSDXC (Secure Digital eXtended Capacity) refers to SD cards with a capacity larger than 32GB and with a maximum theoretical limit of 2TB. They’re formatted in the exFAT filesystem.

In practice, you’ll see only a negligible difference in terms of performance. But there is one aspect where you will see a big difference: microSDHC cards are 32GB or smaller while microSDXC cards are 64GB or larger.¹

microSD Speed Classes Explained

Just like the larger SD cards, microSD cards are assigned a class rating that refers to their speed in writing data. Specifically, it refers to a minimum average performance, not maximum peak performance. Each category is designed to correspond to a real-world video recording use (examples are 4K video or 8K video). These apply the same to microSDHC and microSDXC cards.

Where things get a little complicated, though, is that these speed ratings don’t necessarily reflect the absolute speed of the card. Put another way, a card that has a V30 rating isn’t necessarily faster than one that has a U3 rating. That’s because to display the rating on the card, the manufacturers have to have their cards certified for that rating. It also involves revising packaging and marketing materials, which is an expensive process. So not every manufacturer will go to that trouble and expense right away. The upshot is that it’s not as simple as just looking at a card with a V30 or even V60 rating and knowing that it’s faster than one that only carries a U3 rating. It might be, but the rating system doesn’t work quite that way. You can see evidence of that in the speed test results on this page, with some cards with a lower speed rating being faster in testing than ones that display a higher speed rating on the packaging.

V90. The V-class is a new designation created to designate cards that are designed to work with the speeds required for 4K video and faster. The SD Association added some lower numbers to make them backward compatible with the older class designations (eg. Class 10 and Class 6), but the most important ones are V30 and above.

Memory cards in the V90 class are rated to support a minimum sequential write speed of 90MB/sec. Their primary market is for cameras that shoot 8K video. Cards rated for V90 will work in these cameras, but it’s also overkill–with a UHS-I bus, the Brave 8 can’t take advantage of the card’s UHS-II interface.

V60 is applied to cards that support a minimum sequential write speed of 60MB/sec.

V30 is applied to cards that support a minimum sequential write speed of 30MB/sec. These are designed to support at least full HD video and some 4K video cameras.

U3 is designed to support 4K video recording at a sustained video capture rate of 30MB/s. This class overlaps with the newer V30 class. That is, cards can have both U3 and V30 printed on them.

If the card has any of the following ratings and it doesn’t carry one of the ones listed above as well (the card might have Class 10, U3, and V30 at the same time, for instance), there’s a good chance it’s not fast enough for the Brave 8: U1, Class 10, Class 6, Class 4, Class 2.

There is another kind of speed rating that some newer cards are sporting. It starts with an A, such as A1 or A2. You can ignore that for these purposes. That’s a parallel rating system that applies to a different kind of write speed that’s relevant to app devices but not video recording. (I have a more detailed explanation of the A1 and A2 ratings separately.)

1. Technically, it’s possible to use a computer to format, say, a 32GB microSD card with exFAT or a 128GB card with FAT32. But doing so goes against the SD Association specifications, can cause problems in some cameras, and they’ll be overwritten to the appropriate standard next time you format the card in the camera. In general, I don’t recommend it.[↩]

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