Olympus TG-6 SD Card Recommendations

The Olympus Tough TG-6 camera doesn’t come standard with a memory card as standard. Some retailers sometimes put together bundles that might include an SD card, but chances are you’ll have to pick up a memory card separately. So the natural question is: what’s the best SD card for the Olympus TG-6?

If you want to make sure you get an SD card that can take full advantage of all the Olympus TG-6’s features, the most important thing to be looking for is a card that’s fast enough.

Specifically, you want one with a sequential write speed that’s fast enough to handle the TG-6’s high-bitrate video recording mode (4K Super Fine) and its high-speed burst photo modes. If the card isn’t fast enough to keep up with those, you can end up with recordings that stop prematurely, missed photos, and maybe even camera lockups or other errors. So it’s worth getting the right card from the get-go.

Top Picks for SD Cards for the Olympus TG-6 Compact Waterproof Camera

If you just want some quick recommendations, here you go (you can find more details on these below):

Detailed Version

So which SD card should you get for your TG-6? If you go looking for the answer in the manual, you’ll come up pretty empty-handed. On page 15, you’ll find this:

The following types of SD card (commercially available) can be used with this camera: SD, SDHC, and SDXC. For the latest information, please visit the Olympus website.

OK, then… If you go to the website, you’ll find a compatibility table that includes some SanDisk and Toshiba cards, but it hasn’t been updated since mid-2019 and doesn’t take into consideration the newer models that are actually available today (not to mention: Toshiba SD cards, while very good, are surprisingly difficult to find outside of Japan). There are plenty of other newer, good, cost-effective, and readily available cards that will work well in the TG-6, but there are also some that don’t make good choices.

So what I’m aiming to do here is provide some practical recommendations on which SD cards to get for the TG-6 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 TG-6—there are others that will work just fine as well. I’m focusing here on ones that offer a good combination of meeting the requirements of all of the TG-6’s features, are readily available at major retailers, are cost-effective, and come from major manufacturers with track records for good-quality cards. And in putting these recommendations together, I’m combining Olympus’s guidance (such as it is) and my independent testing of a large number of SD cards.

The good news is that SD cards that work well in the TG-6 are readily available and relatively inexpensive—there are many more than the few that are listed on the Olympus website.

The two functions on the TG-6 that are most demanding of the memory card are the burst photo modes and high-bitrate video recording. And while the TG-6’s 4K Super Fine video mode produces videos with a bitrate of up to 102 Mb/s, which is quite high, it’s nowhere near as demanding as some other cameras; it’s not uncommon these days to find cameras that can shoot at up to 400 Mb/s and require the very fastest SD cards available (but, to be fair, those are different categories of cameras than the TG-6).

If you never plan to use the highest video modes, you can get away with SD cards that are slower, but I’m focusing here on cards that will let you use all of the camera’s features.

So here are some more specific recommendations:

What Size SD Card to Use in the Olympus TG-6

The TG-6 is compatible with SDHC and SDXC cards. That means you can use cards from 4GB all the way to the largest cards currently available, which are 512GB and even 1TB cards. The current sweet spot for a combination of convenience, being readily available, and being cost-effective is probably around the 128GB to 256GB cards. And given that this camera really lends itself to traveling, the larger cards will give you more flexibility with much less risk of running out of space partway through a trip (but you can also obviously take a spare or download your photos and videos on the road).

How to Format Memory Cards in the Olympus TG-6

The TG-6 has both an “All Erase” and a “Format” function. You can find them under:

Shooting Menu 1 > Card Setup

If you’re completely wiping a memory card for use, you want the “Format” option.

The “All Erase” function deletes everything except for photos and video clips that you’ve tagged as protected.

How to Format SD Cards with a Computer

It’s always best practice to format memory cards in the camera you’re planning to use them in, but if that’s not practical or not what you want to do, it is possible to format them with a computer. But 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.

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