UHS-III standard will support SD card transfer rates of up to 624 MB/s

UHS-III standard will support MicroSD transfer rates of up to 624 MB/s

The new specification is coming this year and will make VR recording at even higher resolutions possible.

Allen Ngo, 02/27/2017

Video recording at resolutions greater than 1080p is becoming more common on consumer devices. 360-degree or 4K recording across multiple simultaneous cameras, for example, are now available on consumer drones. The growing demand for faster storage bandwidth has alerted the SD Association to create a new standard to succeed the current UHS-II standard commonly found on most smartphones and other devices.

The UHS-II standard supports theoretical transfer rates of up to 312 MB/s, which is just slightly faster than the current fastest SD card available from Sony at 300 MB/s. The new UHS-III standard aims to double this theoretical maximum to 624 MB/s without changing SD card sizes or electrical contacts to maintain backwards compatibility. Thus, UHS-II SD cards will work on devices with UHS-III card readers. New standards for more SDHC and SDXC subclasses will also be likely.

Devices with integrated UHS-III card readers are expected to ship before the end of this year. We fully expect major manufacturers to announce their first sets of UHS-III-compatible SD cards around the same time as well.