SanDisk Extreme Pro 170MBs Review

SanDisk Extreme Pro 170MB/s Review – hands up from the very start, my go-to camera SD card has always been SanDisk Extreme Pro, also this mini-review is in no way sponsored by anyone, I have always bought my own cards. I’m glad I got that one off my chest 🙂

I am not going into facts and figures that no one understands (especially me) nor am I going to explain the science bit behind the cards, instead I am going from personal experience and many thousands and thousands of images including large timelapse sets and 4K video, taken since 2013 until the present day. I use class 10 SanDisk cards because they clear the camera buffer fast after a rapid burst of shots and on the rare occasion I feel the need to shoot 4K video the cards although UHS-1 can handle 4K with ease or indeed 1080p at 120fps, no worries at all that the card will not keep up with what you are shooting, it will.

To answer a question – “Have I ever had a card fail?” the quick answer to that is YES but never a SanDisk card and I have used many over the years from 32gb to 64gb to 128gb. Now I would never say any memory card is bulletproof and SanDisk cards never fail but treat them with kid gloves like I do, be gentle putting them in and out of the cameras card slots and in and out of the card reader and keep them in a quality hard card case when in your bag and you are greatly reducing the chances of a failure happening, that’s why it’s worth buying better cards to reduce the risk of losing images and improved performance. The days of having to insert 2 smaller capacity cards in case one went down the spout losing your wonderful images are at last going, each time I buy larger and larger capacity cards and risk losing more and more images because I am starting to trust the technology a lot more that I used to, that said, one is bound to fail on me now, it’s sods law after saying all that!

Did you know?

I thought I would add this as part of the review because it is interesting and relevant – did you know that unless you use SanDisk’s (£12 online) card reader, you will rarely get above 95MB/sec read speed even though you are using a 170 MB/s read speed card. That’s a bit naughty of SanDisk don’t you think? I have tested this myself in the card slot at the back of the iMac and in separate card readers, both UHS-1 & UHS-2 and only the branded SanDisk reader will get be anywhere near the full 170MB/sec read speed.

Also, did you know?

Read this one you’ll like it – 170MB/s Extreme Pro cards are the dead same as 95MB/s Extreme Pro cards! Try this one for yourself – if you have a SanDisk card reader, put a 95MB/s Extreme Pro card in there and watch it write at 170MB/s then put the 170MB/s card in there and watch it write at the same speed! I kid you not, save your money and buy a 95MB/s card, for the time being, they are the same and have been able to write at 170MB/s all the time.

If you are not convinced, watch this video by Dave McKeegan entitled – ‘Why you shouldn’t buy the SanDisk 170MB/s cards just yet’

That said and to end, I love and 90% trust these cards, they are quite cheap these days and I would not use anything else in my duel card slot, Fujifilm X-T2 which gets lots of use.

I would love to hear your stories below on the subject and thanks for reading…