I remember buying memory cards when the decision was relatively simple. You looked at the capacity, checked the price, picked a brand you trusted and bought it. A 2GB card was better than a 1GB card. Later, 16GB sounded huge. Then 32GB, 64GB and 128GB arrived, and for a while the biggest question was simply how much storage you could afford.
Try buying a microSD card today.
You walk into the shop or open an online listing and suddenly you're looking at microSDHC, microSDXC, UHS-I, UHS-II, Class 10, U1, U3, V30, V60, V90, A1 and A2. Then there are read speeds, write speeds and giant numbers printed on the packaging that may or may not represent the performance you actually care about.
At some point, buying a tiny memory card started feeling like choosing RAM for a computer.
The problem is that most of these markings actually mean something. They're just trying to describe different things at the same time. SDHC and SDXC relate mainly to capacity and the card standard. U1 and U3 tell you about minimum sustained write performance. The V ratings are aimed at video recording, while A1 and A2 are about application performance. UHS-I and UHS-II refer to the card's bus interface and potential transfer performance.
If you're putting a card into a basic gadget to store photos or files, most of this probably doesn't matter very much. Buy a decent card from a reputable manufacturer with enough capacity and you're likely fine.
Things become more interesting when you start recording video.
A camera might advertise 4K, 6K or even 8K recording, but resolution alone doesn't tell you what memory card you need. Bitrate matters. Recording format matters. Frame rate matters. Suddenly that cheap 512GB card that looked like a bargain might have plenty of space but not enough sustained write performance for the recording mode you actually want to use.
That's where ratings such as V30, V60 and V90 start becoming useful. The number represents a minimum sustained write speed in MB/s. V30 means at least 30MB/s, V60 means 60MB/s and V90 means 90MB/s. You don't automatically need the highest number. You need the card that can reliably keep up with your device.
And that word, reliably, is probably more important than the giant speed printed on the front.
I would rather have a genuine card from a manufacturer I trust than a suspiciously cheap card claiming incredible performance. Fake memory cards have been around for years, and huge capacities make the temptation even greater. A card can tell your device that it has hundreds of gigabytes available while the actual flash memory inside is much smaller. Everything appears normal until you start filling it and discover that your files are corrupted.
That's particularly painful when the files are photographs or video you cannot shoot again.
Compatibility is another thing worth checking. Buying a ridiculously fast card doesn't mean your gadget can use all that performance. Put a high-end card into a device limited by a slower interface and you've essentially bought performance that sits there doing nothing. Sometimes the device manufacturer even provides a list of recommended cards, and that's worth checking before spending extra money.
After years of buying memory cards, I've stopped looking for the card with the most impressive specifications. I start with the device.
What does the camera, drone, action camera, handheld console or other gadget actually support? What am I going to do with it? How fast does the card genuinely need to be? Then I buy something comfortably above that requirement from a source I trust.
Maybe microSD cards haven't really become unnecessarily complicated. The gadgets using them have simply become much more demanding.
Still, I occasionally miss the days when buying a memory card meant answering just two questions.
How many gigabytes do I want, and how much money do I have?