The reason for this post is to talk (complain) about SD cards, since I started shopping for one this week. TLDR is, picking a card is very confusing and, in my opinion, SD card labeling is deliberately misleading and I suspect ongoing price-fixing.

For some background, I used to shoot a lot of sports on my old Nikon DSLRs. I moved moved on with life it stopped being fun, and now I'm picking up wildlife photography with a Lumix G9 (2nd time I have owned one).

I at first bought two cards, Lexar Pro 2000x and 1666x. I wanted to see the speed difference. Well, there is a world of difference. In the real world the faster card cleared the buffer more quickly. But, what is a "fast" card?  went looking for "fast" cards, what I found is confusing. I want two fast cards, one in each slot.  I wanted to know, which card is the fastest for the money? How can I tell?

I used current pricing from Amazon and this web site, where the author David Coleman (havecamerawilltravel.com) has tested the real write and read speeds vs. published speeds. (Thank you David whoever you are.) I assume any other sports & wildlife shooter cares more about write speed than read speed. So I focused on write speed.

So, some thoughts. I would appreciate any corrections if I'm wrong about anything here.

1. Published write speeds vs tested write speeds (see web site above) can vary tremenously.  "Published" means the metric is on the card itself or on the website. PNY, Kingston, and Transcend seem to be reliable. Sandisk and Sony, not so much. Lexar doesn't even publish a write speed for some cards. The inaccuracies are big enough that on the whole, I simply do not trust the published write speeds for any card. (There are some other off-brand cards that I assume are rebadged major brands, anyway I wouldn't buy one so I ignored them.)

2. There are so many designations on the card, without solid explanations on what they mean, that they mean basically nothing and are potentially misleading. What's the difference between V90 and V60? U3 and U1? UHS-II vs UHS? Some published read and write speeds per second, some use a multiplier. (2000x, 1666x for example.) OK great, what are we multiplying? These designations are printed all over the cards, but seem to mean very little in terms of real world performance. They mean nothing to me, and are very confusing.

It is temping to assume these mystery V90, UHS-II, U3 designations mean "fast card," but that is simply untrue. Based on havecamerawilltravel.com, some of those cards perform worse than UHS-I, V60, U1 cards. My assertion is that these labels are diliberately misleading buyers.

3. The governing body for SD (sdcard.org) does not publish any requirements for testing, validating claims, or an audit process. There is a confidential license agreement and NDA, so if any process exists to ensure promises are accurate and audited we can't see it and nobody can talk about it. When the published speed is incorrect, who enforces it? If they can get away with publishing incorrect speeds, how can I trust that the designated standards, like U1 vs U3, are true, even suppusing we knew what they mean? As such, I have no trust in these companies or the governing body.

4. The price for first-tier cards is consistently much higher across the board. Priced per GB right now, "fast" cards are about $1.01 per GB. Second tier cards are about $0.43 per GB. The same exact card I bought in Nov 2020 costs MORE than I paid for it today. The fact that each manufacturer follows the same pricing model, and prices don't decrease, indicates to me potential price fixing.

I am not a lawyer or regulator so if anyone can explain how this works I'd really appreciate an explanation. How is price fixing detected and reported? Who follows up and investigates?

So in short, based on the confusing labeling, misrepresented write speeds, lack of visible or enforced standards, unexplained designations that appear to be meaningless, and large price gap between mid-speed and fast cards that consistently stay high, as a customer I have no trust in these companies. Not to mention potential for counterfeiting, but that's outside the scope of this I think.

So, I hope this is helpful. BTW if you're looking for the best card to buy right now, it would be the PNY 128GB EliteX-PRO90 U3 V90 UHS-II, priced at $0.74 per GB, with a tested write speed of 280 mbps. The worst card is the Sony Tough-G 128GB at $1.63. It claims a write speed of 299mbps, but achieves 234.1mbps, according to havecamerawilltravel.com. But hey at least it's "tough."