82 PCWorld SEPTEMBER 2020

FEATURE YOUR LAPTOP’S SD CARD READER

would be pointless without a fast SD card, we

used a 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro SD card.

The card is a UHS-II card, meaning it rides on

the Ultra High Speed II bus and features a

second row of contact pins on the back to hit

the higher performance ratings of the

interface. The UHS-II bus can hit 312MBps in

full duplex mode and 624MBps in half-duplex

mode. We formatted the card in exFAT, which

has seemingly become the standard for most

large-capacity SD media.

The SanDisk Extreme Pro SD Card is rated

for read speeds right up to the limit of UHS-II

at 300MBps with write speeds rated at

260MBps.

F

or content creators, a laptop with a

built-in SD card reader is a preferred

feature. Some users go so far as to

consider laptops only if they have a

reader.

One mistake with that choice is it assumes

all SD card slots are created equal. Our tests

clearly show they’re not. It’s also difficult to

know how fast the SD card reader in your

laptop is. If SD card speed really matters to

you, the best way to get what you want is to

buy an external reader whose specs are

clearly designated.

PCWorld put four newly manufactured

laptops’ SD cards through their paces. For

this challenge we looked

at:

• Dell XPS 15 9500
  (go.pcworld.com/9500)


• Gigabyte Aero 17
  (go.pcworld.com/gb17)


• XPG Xenia 15 (go.
  pcworld.com/xn15)


• Dell G5 15 SE (go.
  pcworld.com/dlg5)
  To give us a control
  point, we also recorded
  the performance of a
  SanDisk Extreme Pro
  UHS-II USB 3.0 card
  reader inserted into one
  of the Dell G5 15 SE’s
  USB 3.0 slots.
  Because this test

We used a 128GB SanDisk Extreme Pro card rated for 300MBps

reads and 260MBps writes for our testing.