Laptop with a SD card slot

Thanks for your help Martin, I've checked Argos and they only offer this with home delivery unfortunately. Their returns policy says that items have to be returned unopened so I need to think about whether I want to chance it.

My most recent laptop Dell Latitude 5414 is about 2 years old. Dell had to replace my previous one as they could not get some spares. They struggled to match my original high spec. Processor was unfortunately only 2-core (high clock speed), but manage to match memory. But I ended up with 14" very high res touch screen, Main battery and internal second battery, PC/EC card slot, usb x 3, network x 2, hdmi, sd slot, VGA port, serial port, SIM slot, external power outlet port, smart card slot, fingerprint recognition, solid state hard drive, dust proof, semi water proof and 2 meter drop proof. They had to provide an external CD drive and spare charger packs. So you can find laptops with all the bits you need but unfortunately it will cost you. It cost Dell £5500 (well thats what I would have had to pay if it was not a warranty issue) to replace my faulty laptop.

Colin

While normally I would not recommend any one brand above another - all of the major brands have produced good quality kit and so for me it comes down to specification, price and availability - but the only laptop I ever had to scrap prematurely was a consumer level Dell where the multi ball array that the processor sat on went faulty just out of warranty and was non repairable.

My HP Pavilion laptop purchased about 12 months ago has an SD slot. Never had any trouble with HP gear. My old HP is going on for 8 years old and still in use. Seems bulletproof.

Please forgive the slight digression, but this seems a good place to put this link, for reference: **LINK**

http://www.centon.com/support/51-sd-card-compatibility

I have recently acquired 128GB and 256GB cards which are not compatible with my Mac slot, or with my USB 2 reader.

MichaelG.

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Edit: the hyperlink on that page is broken, so this might be useful:

https://www.sdcard.org/?s=sdxc

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 15/04/2021 00:02:34

Something I forgot to mention ... If you work with numbers a lot its worth considering if the laptop has a full numeric keyboard.

I recently purchased an HP EliteBook 840 G3. i wanted to plug in my camera chip (SDHC Card) and could not find a slot Lots of other slots and ports on the side. I finally noticed a little plastic cover on the bottom, removed it and there was my missing SDHC card slot. I assume they had to put it underneath because they ran out of room on the side. Just my experience or lack of.. Rick

How old is the Mac, or rather which version of OSX is it running? Could be hardware or software incompatibility Cards bigger than 32Gb are formatted with exFAT which requires Snow Leopard or later.

Otherwise, might get a clue by trying this: start a terminal session (console) and then plug in the SD-Card. In the terminal immediately run the command 'dmesg' which should list the kernel log, showing what happened when the card was plugged in. The relevant messages will be near the end.

Dave

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I will try the terminal, Dave ... thanks

The Mac is an elderly 15” MacBook Pro [model 5,4] running el Capitan

... I suspect it’s capped at 32GB on the SD card slot

I wasn’t really asking for help though: just pointing others to some perhaps-useful information about slots

MichaelG.

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Report: I can see nothing relating to the SD card, in the console log

... and, looking at the USB Device Tree, the Card Reader is listed:

Card Reader:

  Product ID: 0x8403

  Vendor ID: 0x05ac  (Apple Inc.)

  Version: 98.33

  Serial Number: 000000009833

  Speed: Up to 480 Mb/sec

  Manufacturer: Apple

  Location ID: 0x26500000 / 1

  Current Available (mA): 1000

  Current Required (mA): 500

  Extra Operating Current (mA): 0

  Built-In: Yes

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But with nothing connected to it 

The card is a Lexar 128GB ... similar to the one pictured here:

https://www.lexar.com/portfolio_page/professional-2000x-sdhcsdxc-uhs-ii-cards/

... but without the V90 mark

[ possibly an earlier version ... or could it be a fake ? ] 

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 15/04/2021 18:53:18

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Apologies ... Although true; that ^^^ was a 'red herring'

A known good 4GB SD Card mounts correctly, but is still not listed on the Device Tree

It does, however, show-up on the Desktop; in Disk Utility; and on the Finder ... which the 128GB card does not.

MichaelG.

Just to close the loop on this one, I ended up with a 17.3" Lenovo Legion 5 (2.6/5.0Mhz, 16gb RAM, 512gb SSD) bought direct from Lenovo with nine months interest credit.

It pretty much fulfils all my requirements and on opening this morning seems to be a very well made and sturdy machine. I was surprised to find that on reading the start-up info there is a SD card slot is this 17.3" version, a very well kept secret that even Lenovo help didn't acknowledge!

Thanks for everyone's help enabling me to get this far, I've just got to learn all the new stuff on it now!

Reviving this thread to link this very informative page from SanDisk : **LINK**

https://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/2520/~/sd%2Fsdhc%2Fsdxc-specifications-and-compatibility

MichaelG.

Hi MichaelG, that is very informative from SanDisk. As it happens, my recently new Acer laptop has no card slot and some of my SD memory cards can't be read on my old computers with a the USB card reader that I've had for many years, although they do have card readers built into them and will read all those I have tried. However I thought it was time to get a new card reader, inspired by this thread by the way. Saw this one in Tesco's NANGA cardreader for £5.00, and it reads more types of card than I have got. In fact I used it just the other night to record a TV programme while I was out, onto a SanDisk micro SD Ultra and is impeccable, so I bought another one just for my new laptop.

Regards Nick.

Edited By Nicholas Farr on 02/05/2021 17:10:47