Choosing the right memory card for your dash cam

Choosing the correct card for your dash cam may seem like an uphill challenge. There are acronyms banded around like no ones buinsess and you'd be forgiven for wanting to bury your head in the sand or return to public transport.

TF Vs microSD Vs SD

The three industry standard ways of supplying additional memory to your device are via SD, microSD and TF card. TF card and microSD are exactly the same thing under different names.

So with devices getting smaller and smaller, microSD is head and shoulders above the other options in terms of popularity. microSD/TF cards are bar far the smallest and with advances in technology, they can hold up to 200GB of data on a super fast chip.

What classification of card you buy depends on the recording capability of your card. A 720p camera will operate quite well with anything above a class4. However if you're camera records in super HD 1296p we would definitely reccomend at least class10 and even push to a UHS-1 card as they offer faster data read/write speeds. The last thing you want is for your dash cam to crash because the card is to slow to handle the rate at which data is being written.

The size of the card you buy will also depend very much on the cameras functionality. If your camera has the loop recording function then you will not need to buy a huge capacity card. The loop funciton will lock footage that has been taken during times of hgihg impact, velocity or breaking. All footage that is not locked will be recorded over conitnuously which then negates the need for a huge capacity memory card. The most popular size by far is the 32GB card which appears to offer just enough memory for the price. A typical 32GB card recording in 1080p will record around 4 hours of data. A 64Gb card may record aorund 8 hours respectively.



There is an increasing trend for people to purchase low price, unlicenced and unbranded memory. Your dash cam footage is only as good as the stability of the memory card so for a pound or two more you can be certain.

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES PURCHASE UPGRADED MEMORY. This type of memory is fake but you will not know until your data is lost.