UHS-I vs UHS-II on microSD and SD Cards

If you’ve looked at buying an SD or microSD card lately, you might have run into some new codes: specifically, UHS-II.

It refers to something called ultra high-speed bus, which in turn refers to the interface between the card and the device. So far, there is UHS-I and UHS-II.

UHS-II is the newer, and potentially faster, system but adoption is still not widespread. And a UHS-II isn’t necessarily guaranteed to be faster than every UHS-I card in practice. I’ve put quite a through microSD and SD cards through speed tests, and the UHS-II cards aren’t necessarily faster, at least for now.

Compatibility

The UHS-I and UHS-II specifications are designed to be backwards compatible. That means that you can use a UHS-II card in a device that’s compatible with UHS-I and vice versa. But if you do so, you’ll be limited to the lower spec, in this case UHS-I.

In many cases, it frankly doesn’t matter which you get. But that’s simply because the cameras and devices that can take full advantage of UHS-II are only just starting to become available.

And some that are UHS-II compatible can be a bit quirky. For instance, the FujiFilm X-Pro 2 camera has two SD slots. But only one is uses UHS-II. So if you put a UHS-II Sd card in the slot that has the UHS-I interface, you’ll be limited to UHS-I speeds.

But if you have a device that does use the UHS-II interface–and the technical specs or instruction manual will say so if it does–then there’s a good chance you’ll get better performance out of a UHS-II card.

One common device where this can become an issue is with memory card readers. Most of the card readers currently available support UHS-I cards. UHS-II cards will work, but they’ll be limited to UHS-I speeds. There are some card readers that do support UHS-II, such as the Lexar SR2 reader or the SanDisk Extreme Pro reader, but you can’t assume that every card reader does.

How to Tell the Difference Between UHS-I and UHS-II

There are two ways to tell the difference. The first is obvious: look at the label or packaging. They’ll have either UHS-I or UHS-II, or sometimes just I or II. Technically, it should be Roman numerals, but you’ll sometimes see it incorrectly written as a number 1, like UHS-1.

You can also tell them apart by looking at the cards themselves. UHS-I cards have a single row of pins on the back. UHS-II have two rows. In this example, both of these are SanDisk Extreme Pro cards, just different generations.

U1 vs U3 vs V30

The UHS-II code isn’t the only new code you’ll see on some microSD and SD cards. There’s also a new code that relates to suitability for recording high-resolution video. U1 and U3 have been around for a while; the new addition is V30.

All of these are speed classes aimed at recording high resolution video. And they’re a separate designation from the UHS-I vs UHS-II one. I have more information on microSD speed classes here.

Last update on 2017-08-23 at 18:08 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API