SD card download speed to Macbook Pro, slot vs USB3 card reader?

[Eric Brody]

The title just about says it all. I have a mid 2012 Macbook Pro, 2.3GHz I7 with 8GB RAM and the standard Toshiba 500GB hard drive..

Is it faster when downloading SD cards, Sandisk 95MB/sec, to use the built in slot or to use my USB3 card reader?

It's not obvious to me but I do not know how to do a formal test.

Thanks for any help.

Eric

[Alan Goldhammer]

I'm not a Mac user but I do know that card readers on PCs at that time period were all USB 2.0.  I upgraded to a Kingston USB 3.0 card reader for my PC last year and download speeds for my D300 were significantly faster (standard import into LR).  I prefer external card readers since one doesn't have to pull the machine apart if something goes wrong (I've seen bent pins on card readers that make them inoperable). 

[george2787]

Can't you download the same files to 2 different folders in the desktop ad use a stopwatch  That should give you an idea.

[RobSaecker]

You can find out if you have USB 3 by going to the Apple menu -> About this Mac. If the USB ports are 3.0 then the SD slot is as well. If not, then both internal and external readers will be limited to USB 2 speeds, so it doesn’t make a difference either way.

[Eric Brody]

Interesting suggestions. In the "system information," it says that the card reader "Link Speed" is 2.5GT/s. When I Googled GT/s I got info about PCIe but not the basic speed. It lists the USB ports as USB 3.0 Hi-Speed Bus and USB 3.0 Superspeed Bus, so it's all USB 3. Maybe I will have to do a timed download, though I'd love to know the realistic translation of GT/s.
Thanks.
Eric