Both DJI Air 2s and Mavic Air 2 come with 8Gb of internal storage. They don’t come, however, with an SD card and let’s be honest, 8Gb is far from enough to fit most drone pilots’ uses. 8Gb is barely enough to fit 8 minutes of 4K footage.
The point is, you need an SD card. Which brings us to the topic of this article, which SD cards are best when it comes to the DJI Air 2s and which ones should be avoided?
If you’re tight on time and want straight answers, I got you covered. Below are my top 3 SD cards for both the Mavic Air 2s and Mavic Air 2:
If you’re someone who likes to dig further, stick around because I’ll mostly cover everything that has to do with SD cards for the DJI Air 2s.
A very subjective question to answer as it highly depends on what you’re trying to do with the drone.
Generally, for beginners a 32gb SD card is enough for the DJI Air 2s. The more advanced users may need 64gb while professional cinematographers will find the 128gb works best for them.
To give you an idea. A 64gb can allow you to shoot a continuous 1h20m 4K video. You should keep in mind though that the largest storage supported by DJI Air 2s is 256Gb.
What are the requirements for DJI Air 2s SD cards?
DJI drones are always picky when it comes to SD cards and the Mavic Air 2s is no exception. You’ll have to be careful when picking an sd card for your drone as incompatible ones won’t work. As a rule of thumb, there’ll be two things you’ll be looking for:
Note: Since you’re using the Air 2s I’m assuming you’ll be doing some heavy filmmaking. In which case get yourself sd cards with writing speeds above 65 Mb/s. Sure, 30 Mb/s ones will work, but for high quality footage, the higher the card’s speed the better.
Being able to understand what the symbols on an SD card mean and how to read them will be a huge help to you as it’ll prevent you from getting scammed… most of the time.
Below is an explanation of every symbol on an SD card:
Storage capacity is obvious. Select one that has enough storage for your needs. Generally for the Air 2s you won’t need more than 32Gb. 64Gb tops if you really want to push it.
Card type can either be XC or HC, HC stands for high capacity and they come from 4Gb to 32Gb. XC means extra capacity and can go all the way to 4Tb. Remember though, any card above 256Gb in storage won’t work for the DJI Air 2s.
UHS Speed Class, the most important factor after storage when it comes to drones. Any SD card that’s under Class 3 is too slow for the DJI Air 2s and won’t work for it.
The video speed class means the minimum sustained write speed of the video to the card. An indicator that filmmakers are usually the most interested in.
Then lastly we have the application performance class. It’s usually either A1 or A2 (with A2 being the newer and better models) and it indicates the speed at which the SD card can perform random read and write tasks.
So we’ve looked at which cards are compatible with the DJI Air 2s, and what kind of cards won’t work. Besides the top 3 SD cards recommendations, here is a table with several other cards that I think are great for your DJI Air 2s.
| SD Card | Storage Capacity | Write Speed (Mb/s) |
| Samsung Pro Endurance | 32Gb | 100 Mb/s |
| SanDisk Extreme Pro V30 A1 | 32Gb | 100 Mb/s |
| Lexar 667x | 32Gb | 100 Mb/s |
| Samsung Evo Plus | 64Gb | 100 Mb/s |
| Toshiba EXCERIA M303 V30 A1 | 64Gb | 65 Mb/s |
| Netac Pro V30 A1 | 64Gb | 100 Mb/s |
Keep in mind that these SD cards come in 128 & 256 GB storages as well. They’re all above class U3 as you can see by the speed and perform well for videographers and hobbyists alike when it comes to the DJI Air 2s.
More isn’t always better when it comes to SD cards as well as the readers of these SD cards. The max storage for a DJI Air 2s SD card is 256Gb. Any more and the card won’t work.
Many drones come with an SD card so it’s only natural you’d assume the Air 2s does as well. Unfortunately the DJI Air 2s doesn’t come with an SD card, you’d have to buy it yourself.
DJI Air 2s has an internal storage of 8Gb. However that’s hardly useful as it can barely get you 11 minutes of 4k footage. Getting an external SD card is recommended.
Speed is an important factor when looking at which cards to get. DJI Air 2s requires the SD card to have a speed class of U3, meaning a minimum speed of 30MB/s.
It’s fairly simple. Find the SD card slot on the right side of the drone. Insert the sd card in the slot until you hear a click sound. Make sure the side with the logo is upward.
SD card formatting is basically the way an SD card (or any other storage device) organizes information. The type of formatting DJI Air 2s uses is FAT32 (also supports exFAT). Same as every other DJI drone.
The process is simple, you can either format your SD card through your computer or through your drone’s Fly App. I recommend you do it through the Fly App since the formatting type of computers isn’t the same as that of drones and will give you an error in turn (usually it’ll prompt a “card unavailable” error).
To format your DJI Air 2s sd card, follow these steps:
Here is how that looks like in the app:
This is an error that comes up for various reasons. The most common cause of it is formatting. Simply open up your Fly App and in the settings scroll to the SD card section then hit “format”. That should format the card and make it work.
Make sure you have a backup before you format your card. Other times this fix might now work, in which case you should make sure the card speed is above 30MB/s (meaning the card is U3). Also make sure that the card isn’t physically damaged before deciding your drone is malfunctioning.
There are also various other problems that may cause an SD card to not be read by your Air 2s drone, I've covered that topic in-depth in this article.
Well, an Air 2s has an internal storage of 8Gb so you can definitely record on it without an external SD card. It won’t do much however as a 8gb memory can only record about 11 minutes max of 4k footage.
Which is why it’s recommended to get yourself an SD card (from the ones I recommended). They don’t cost much after all.
This is a detailed explanation on the SD card symbols we brushed upon above.
U3: MicroSD cards with a U3 rating have a write rate of 30MB/s.
V30: A V30 sd card has a minimum writing speed of 30MB/s.
V60: A V60 card has a minimum writing speed of 60MB/s.
V90: A V90 memory card has a minimum writing speed of 90MB/s.
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