Moto G5 - Which SD Card Should I Get?

martindow

My Motorola phone keeps warning me that I am running out of memory so I am looking to get an SD card for it.  It will support up to 128GB, but that seems enormous compared to the current 16GB internal memory. 

How do I decide what to go for to have sufficient memory without paying for a card where I will not be using most of its capacity?  Are some makes superior to others or should I just buy on price?

Neil_Jones

Get the biggest one you can afford.  Minimum of class 10 speed.

Little difference between all the brands, so if you're happy for Kingston or Sandisk or another "big" brand, go for it.

You can never have too much space.  Phones come with 128Gb as standard.  As apps get bigger, videos get recorded in 4k and photos get higher resolution, it all eats up space.

neilmcl

There's not a huge difference in price between 64GB and 128Gb, maybe a fiver. Just get as much as you can afford.

BTW, it's referred to as storage, not memory.

Here's a couple to choose from
https://www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-microSDXC-Adapter-Performance-SDSQUA4-128G-GN6MA/dp/B08GYKNCCP/ref=sr_1_6

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-128GB-memory-MB-MC128HA-APC/dp/B08GY99LX8/ref=sr_1_3

I'd go for the former as it's sold by Amazon, less likely to be a fake.

[Deleted User]

Be careful of fake SD cards as well, buy from a reputable seller instead of trying to save a few quid from an unknown seller or low reputation such as wish.com

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-spot-fake-microsd-card/

bob_a_builder

Are you sure you will be able to move any apps to the SD card ?
Had a G5 before and it didn't offer much option to move apps to SD as I recall 

googler

Be aware that apps may not be movable, and if your storage problem is too many apps in main memory, and the working storage they require, then and SD card will bring you no benefit.

martindow

Thanks all for the replies and your helpful advice.  I had read about some apps not being able to be moved when I had a google for information.  I assume that as long as some of them can be shifted across it would free up some space and help to avoid the phone being overfull. 

Grumpy_chap

martindow said:

My Motorola phone keeps warning me that I am running out of memory so I am looking to get an SD card for it.  It will support up to 128GB, but that seems enormous compared to the current 16GB internal memory. 

How do I decide what to go for to have sufficient memory without paying for a card where I will not be using most of its capacity?  Are some makes superior to others or should I just buy on price?

I agree with others to get the largest SD card that you can afford and the phone will accept.

However, I'd also add that my wife has (had) a Moto G5 and the version of Android installed is no longer receiving the security updates and that caused a conflict with MyFitnessPal app.  We figured it would not be long before other apps also declared themselves incompatible, so combined with low memory issues, she went for an upgrade to the Moto G9 which is an absolute bargain at present and 64GB:
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/7835216

Also, most apps on the G5 cannot be moved to the SD card.

jamesd

Apps on the G5 might mostly not be moveable but pictures are going to be. Same for downloaded files.

On the speed side of things, the bit to look for is either A1 or A2.That measures app performance when running off the card. A1 has very little extra cost compared to A0 (no A shown at all) while A2 does have a fair premium but is likely to be worth it during heavy usage.

Class 10, 8 or whatever are a measure intended for photography use and it's purely how fast they can read or write files that are largely in a single chunk. Apps do far more jumping around than that and so the newer A ratings were introduced for app performance comparison. Your phone doesn't need anything special to get most of the benefit, though some of the A2 speed features do need hardware or software support that old phones won't have.

I use A2 types several hundred gigabytes in size is the main storage on my tablets and it's at times faster than the built in 64 gigabytes.

It's often possible to force apps to be moveable though it depends on the phone to some extent.

neilmcl

For the avoidance of doubt, are we referring to the original Moto G5 (as released back in 2017) or the newer Moto G 5g?

martindow

neilmcl said:

For the avoidance of doubt, are we referring to the original Moto G5 (as released back in 2017) or the newer Moto G 5g?

Thanks it's a G5 second generation XT1675 running Android 8.1