There's not a ton differentiating these from each other, but you'll still need to make sure you get the right one.

For contactless smart cards that have more highly-powered RF circuits inside them, you'll need a specialized proximity card reader. Some of these models also support EMV payment processing, however, if you need to accept payments on a regular basis, we high recommend getting a dedicated credit card reader. That last part is important to many governmental offices and contractors, and as such, those institutions should look to the IOgear GSR205 for an American-made security solution. Given their simplicity, these devices come down mostly to dependability, which all of our recommendations offer, and USA-sourced materials.

For that reason, the only recent change to this Wiki was the removal of the Gemalto IDBridge, which is now difficult to find and offers no tangible benefits compared to other options. The Unitek is a worthy card reader for anyone who needs to get their data off of a memory card.On its fundamental level, CAC smart card technology has not changed in years, and it almost certainly won't change significantly anytime soon. Not only did it hail some of the fastest write speeds from the batch of readers we tested, but it also offers a multitude of connection options. The latter is a type of connection standard that's become more widely used, and many Apple laptops, Chromebooks, and Ultrabooks only come with this kind of port.Īfter calculating speed times for eight of the best SD card readers on the market, we discovered our favorite is the Unitek Y-9324BGY ( available at Amazon).

To find the best SD reader for your machine, we tested those that connect either via USB or by way of USB Type-C. They don't just read SD cards some can read microSD cards, CompactFlash (CF) cards, and even Sony’s Memory Stick Pro Duo. And the best way to do that-if you don't already have a card reader embedded into your computer or laptop-is to buy one that connects externally.Ĭard readers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with all types of connectors. Have your SD cards been filling up and collecting over the years? If so, you'll eventually want to offload those photos and files.

Best chip card reader and writer