There aren’t many e-readers and e-notes in the industry that use SD cards anymore. Some used to do it but now go with their cloud storage solutions. Several brands such as Meebook, HyRead,iFlytek, Mobiscribe, Bigme and Pocketbook are likely the most prominent players still supporting SD cards, but hardly anyone else does, except for the occasional outlier. When SD cards are supported, they usually cap out anywhere from 512GB to 1TB, and this is OK for most users, but if you love listening to audiobooks, have complex PDF documents, or large manga series, even this might not be enough. Should these companies support higher-capacity SD cards?
The first-generation Kindle had an SD card, but all subsequent models did not. Barnes and Noble Nooks supported SD cards up to the Simple Touch with Glowlight and abandoned them in future models over fears of ebook piracy. Most Kobo e-readers had an SD Card, but they ceased to include it in all of their modern models, starting with the Kobo Glo HD, Kobo Touch 2.0 and Kobo Aura One. The main reason why Kobo abandoned SD support is because they are using an SD card that is grafted on the motherboard to power the device’s internal storage. The SD handles the Linux operating system; content users purchase from the Kobo digital bookstore, Overdrive ebooks, firmware updates and sideloaded fonts & ebooks.
Why has everyone abandoned SD cards for the most part? Everyone who has a bookstore loaded right on the e-reader has a vested interest in not making it easy to sideload in your collection of content. They want you to buy books from them and them alone. If you run out of room, you can delete the book on your device with the library menu and store it in the cloud. SD cards also cost an additional fee during manufacturing, and e-readers are cheaper than ever; skimping out on things like a smaller battery, no SD card, and plastic housing saves money.
Western Digital has announced in 2025, they will be releasing the world’s first 4TB SD cards. The upcoming SanDisk Extreme Pro SDUC UHS-I card packs 4TB of storage into a card about the size of a postage stamp. As a UHS-I Class 10 card, it should offer data transfer speeds up to 104MB/S, although AnandTech notes that it may be likely the cards could support higher speeds (up to 170MB/s), even though that’s not mentioned in the press release. There are also a myriad of SD cards out there with 2TB.
Should e-reader companies support higher storage? Is 1TB enough for the average user? Should more brands support SD cards? Do you even care about expandable storage?
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
