A physical SD card slot made a comeback in the 2021 MacBook Pro notebooks. Users were excited to have the SD card reader to quickly transfer their data but the flakey performance of the reader has dampened their enthusiasm. Immediately after the launch of the 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro in October, some users complained of slow SD card transfer speeds and others report that it did not function at all. Unfortunately, the SD card reader issues still persist.
Earlier, users also found that their 2021 MacBook Pro notebook did not charge when the machines were completely shut down and reported restarting issues on their laptops after watching HDR videos on YouTube.
2021 MacBook Pro owners report different SD card issues
Affected owners shared their experiences on MacRumors Forum and the SD card issue seems inconsistent; where one card works for one user, the same card does not work for another user. It is not known if it is a hardware or a software issue.
Another hand up for SD card reader issues. Don’t use SD cards much outside of GoPros (everything else in my kit is either CFexpress or CFast), but almost every time I try to read a card in the internal reader, the transfer starts off crazy slow, and often fails. No such issues with the Sandisk USB-C reader I bought several years ago. @DFP1989
To add to SD card experiences: On new 16″ mid-tier stock config Both Sandisk Extreme Pro
32GB 95 mb/s card with about 20 pictures (all Z6 II Raw files, same on 128gb card) is slow to load in Preview and to load into Lightroom, like really slow.
128GB 170 mb/s with about 4200 pictures on it loads pretty fast in Preview and thumbnails all load pretty fast in Lightroom when you go to choose what to Import. @Nismo 73
My 32GB Sandisks (2 of them) worked, albeit slow as molasses on a cold day. My 64GB Sandisk works like lightning. Dumped the 32GB Sandisks for 2 more of the 64GB variety and the sd cards all work like a champ. Gotta be a software issue hiding in here somewhere. @Busbob
Post #181 found a 64GB Sandisk did not work properly. I have a Sony 64GB card that works, and a Sandisk 64GB card that doesn’t.
There has to be some specific condition(s) that determine whether it works or not. But there are so many variables involved, it is hard for us to reverse engineer the magic combination that does always work. @wilberforce
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