If you’re occasionally pulling footage—whether from DSLRs, security cams, dash cams, drone cams—and you hate the fact that your laptop doesn’t have card slots, what you need is a tiny little accessory like this one: Acer’s dual-USB SD/microSD card reader. It’s on sale for just $10 at Amazon right now and it does something most card readers don’t.
Just look at it once and you’ll see why it’s special: it’s double-sided with one end having a USB-C connector and the other end USB-A. That makes it super versatile, able to be used with pretty much any device you have, new or old—tablets, MacBooks, phones, whatever. It also has both SD and microSD card slots, so you can use it with your phone memory card, your dash and security cams, and even your CPAP machine.
Both SD and microSD card slots can be used at the same time, which means pulling data from two cards at once or even moving data from one card to another directly. But while this USB 3.0 reader has a theoretical max speed of 5 Gbps (625 MB/s), the SD and microSD slots are bottlenecks with a theoretical 104 MB/s cap.
That means this card reader isn’t the best choice for creatives and professionals who are constantly moving huge 4K or 8K video. It also doesn’t have passthrough charging, so if your laptop only has a single USB-C port for charging, you won’t be able to charge and use this card reader at the same time.
But at $10, it’s easy to overlook those limitations. Acer’s dual-USB card reader is handy to have in a pinch for all your SD and microSD cards.