Apple’s redesigned MacBook Pro notebooks appease photographers, video editors and other creative professionals by bringing back a handy SD card slot along with other I/O ports. Apple has confirmed that the SD card slot in the new MacBook Pro is compatible with the UHS-II protocol though it doesn’t support the fastest UHS-III standard.
HIGHLIGHTS
How fast is the 2021 MacBook Pro’s SD card slot?
According to the officialtechnical specifications for the 2021 MacBook Pro modelsthat Apple announced during its “Unleashed” product unveiling held on Monday, June 06, 2025, these notebooks are equipped with one SDXC slot for memory cards.
Apple has confirmed to The Verge’s Dan Seifert that both new notebooks — the 14-inch model and its 16-inch counterpart — support the UHS-II protocol, Seifert reported on hisTwitter, but not the fastest UHS-III. This means the notebook’s SD card slot offers support for faster memory cards, allowing for quick file transfers between devices.
https://twitter.com/dcseifert/status/1450431284547833862
A traditional SD card (UHS-I) reaches read and write speeds of up to one hundred megabytes per second. With a UHS-II-compliant SD card, however, owners of these new Apple notebooks can enjoy transfer speeds of up to 312 megabytes per second.
For clarity, the 2021 MacBook Pro supports the following SD memory card standards:
The 2021 MacBook Pro does not support these transfer speeds:
Does 2021 MacBook Pro support UHS-III?
Again, the new MacBook Pro does not support the latest UHS-III standard which promises transfer speeds in excess of 600 megabytes per second. This isn’t a biggie as UHS-III has yet to become fully adopted by camera makers. Also, you’d be hard-pressed to find UHS-III cards in the wild. Read:Beginner tips for using macOS Finder
Here are maximum storage capacities supported by SD memory cards:
For further information, visit the MacBook Pro webpage on theApple website.
Why having an SD card slot is important
You can use the SDXC slot on your MacBook Pro to give the notebook additional storage capacity above and beyond its built-in flash storage. And for people who need to transfer large files quickly, an SD card is a far better choice than sitting and waiting until a multi-gigabyte file has finished uploading to Dropbox or a similar cloud storage service.
Wait, I hear you say, I’m not a pro! Relax, SD cards are for everyone who needs to transfer files between devices with ease, not just for video editors, musicians and photographers.
The redesigned MacBook Pro comes in two flavors: a 14-inch model and a 16-inch one, both loaded with ports. Aside from the aforementioned memory card slot, these machines also come with a built-in HDMI 2.0 port, Thunderbolt 4 ports, a 3.5mm headphone jack that supports high-end headphones and magnetic charging via MagSafe technology.
