Amazon has joined the rest of the industry and finally started putting USB-C ports on its tablets, so now’s the perfect time to upgrade. The storage inside the new Fire HD 8 still tops out at 64GB, though, so I highly recommend grabbing some of the best microSD cards for the Fire HD 8 to make more room for all the movies and shows you’ll want to watch on your next international trip or lazy Sunday morning in bed.
For the long haul
Samsung: EVO Select UHS-1 128GB
Staff Pick
This has been my favorite microSD card for years now, and there’s a reason newer cards have yet to usurp it: it’s affordable, long-lasting, and 128GB is enough to hold dozens of films or tens of thousands of songs.
$20 at Amazon
$24 at Walmart
Value option
SanDisk Ultra UHS-I 32GB
If you just need a little extra space for movies or games, skip your morning coffee for two days and double the space in your 32GB Fire HD 8. It’s not the fastest card ever made, but it’s enough for your tablet’s needs.
$12 at Amazon
$9 at B&H
Double your space
PNY Elite-X 64GB
The maximum storage your Fire HD 8 could come with was 64GB, so that this card will double the room for your movies, music, and games for less than a large pizza. It’s also A1 rated for storing and running Android apps.
$10 at Amazon
$10 at B&H
Durable and dependable
SanDisk Extreme UHS-I 128GB
SanDisk is one of the best-known names in the microSD space, with the Extreme line being among some of the most durable and long-lasting cards out there. This 128GB card should easily outlive your new tablet.
$45 at Amazon
$23 at B&H
App-ready
Kingston Canvas Go! Plus 128GB
This upgraded lineup takes the Canvas Go! line is A2-rated for storing and executing Android apps, and it has read speeds of up to 170MB/s for watching the highest-resolution movies on your tablet.
$25 at Amazon
$25 at B&H
Ready to work
SP Silicon Power Superior 256GB
Silicon Power might not be a brand you’re too familiar with, but they’ve been around long enough for me to trust their cards with my own music library, and even a 256GB or 512GB card won’t blow your budget.
$40 at Amazon
$30 at B&H
Name-brand renown
Samsung EVO Select UHS-I 256GB
Do you need to keep all eight seasons of My Little Pony and the seven other shows your kid watches constantly downloaded for their entertainment during car rides? 256GB should give you the space to download it all in HD.
$36 at Amazon
$85 at Walmart
Big capacity, small price
Lexar 633x UHS-I 512GB
The Lexar Professional line may get more attention for its higher write speeds, but for a tablet where the microSD card will primarily be used for storing movies and music, the 633x is the perfect fit.
$70 at Amazon
$95 at B&H
Biggest around
SanDisk Extreme UHS-I 1TB
The Amazon Fire HD 8 can take up to a 1TB microSD card, and this is essentially the only 1TB microSD card on sale right now. If you need to store literally your entire digital life on a microSD card, make it this one.
$230 at Amazon
$230 at B&H
What are the best microSD cards for the new Fire HD 8 tablet?
Normally tablets tend to only support microSD cards up to 128GB, but the Fire HD 8 supports up to a terabyte, so you can as big or as little of a card as you need to fit your budget and needs. When picking a microSD card, your focus should be on speed, capacity, and quality in that order. If you don’t know what size you really need, I usually pop a 128GB card — specifically, the Samsung EVO Select 128GB — into my tablets and phones because that’s enough to hold dozens of films and TV episodes with plenty of extra room for music, pictures or apps.
If you prefer to go bigger, the Lexar 633x 512GB card will give you half a terabyte of storage for less than most 256GB cards while still being a name-brand card with a name-brand warranty attached to it. Though Amazon’s Fire tablets are not only some of the best cheap Android tablets, but also some of the best Android tablets — period, it never hurts to have more storage. Keep in mind it’s always better to buy a little bigger built-in storage than you think you need than to buy a card, completely fill it up and then have to hassle with buying another card and getting everything transferred over to it.
What all those symbols on a microSD card mean — and why they don’t always matter
The top of a microSD card’s minimal space is covered from edge to edge with manufacturer branding and then this weird hodge-podge of certifications and symbols. Of course, many of these symbols mean the same things, and almost all of the cards you’ll want to buy have the same symbols, but they can be useful in ruling cards out quickly while buying.
- Video Speed Class — Indicated by a stylized V followed by numbers from 6 to 90, this class is one of the newer classification systems and was developed specifically for shooting ultra-high-definition video. For example, V30 starts at 30MB/s write speed, V60 starts at 60MB/s write speed, and V90 starts at 90MB/s, but on the Fire HD 8, anything over V30 is overkill.
- UHS Speed Class — Indicated by a 1, 2, or 3 inside a U, this class is still used on most cards today. U1 starts at 10MB/s write speed, U3 starts at 30MB/s write speed, and both are perfectly adequate for your new tablet.
- Speed Class — Indicated by a number inside of a C, this was the original classification system for SD cards, and almost all cards today are beyond the top speed here of 10MB/s. So if you see 8 or lower, run, don’t walk away!
Notice that all these specifications focus on write speed. Read speed is almost always faster than write speed, so if you see a card that only mentions “transfer speed” of 100 MB/s but is a V30 card, we can infer that the read speed is 100 MB/s and the write speed is at least 30 MB/s.
