Micro SD cards - so which ones actually do work?

simcity said:

Non compatibility with these H1’s isn’t strictly correlated to size of card either - the 256GB Lexar card worked just fine.

Well, 32GB still seems be the 100% compatible size, just like with the older (non H1) models. Garmin saying now that "cards up to 1TB" will work when that's clearly not the case is just wrong. Maybe some cards will work (as you and others have proven) but it just seems to be a crap shoot as it stands now.

I used 4 different programs; Aomei Partition Assistant, SD Memory Card Formatter as listed above, standard Windows formatting, and SDFormatter. Again, tried every sector size with both exFAT and FAT32. Found some odd things, like with exFAT some of the cards would be read with certain sector sizes but not others, above 1MB it was every other. But nothing worked, it was always the situation where it might be recognized when inserting after the device was booted but not if it's in there and then the GPS is booted. The 32GB Sandisk Ultra and 128GB High Endurance cards were the only ones that worked correctly.

It's clear something's screwed up. I think Garmin needs to publish a compatible hardware list for SD cards that function correctly like is common in most computer components.

Maybe Garmin should implement an on-device memory card formatting utility to force a certain format structure so that the device would be able to at least read cards formatted within the unit. Somewhat like digital cameras provided in the past. Or maybe this can be their "fix". Of course, I'm just wondering out loud.

I think Garmin should just fix their software so that the H1 / H1i Plus supports all microSD cards just as their support article states.

JungleJim said:

I think Garmin should just fix their software so that the H1 / H1i Plus supports all microSD cards just as their support article states.

Hopefully this will be the case for you guys

Garmin Express does indeed show that there is a firmware update of version 7.07 for the GPSMAP H1. After the update was completed, I was somewhat disappointed. The official claim of supporting up to 1TB capacity memory cards still hasn't been resolved in this version of the firmware. A 32GB memory card is recognized without any issues, but a 128GB memory card still cannot be recognized (the 128GB memory card can only be recognized after being inserted into the device after startup, and it becomes unrecognizable again after a restart). Both memory cards are from SanDisk.

Not sure why you'd expect that, there's nothing in the update notes about it:

v7.07 February 5th, 2026

• Added Grade Shading to altimeter pages

• Added round trip routing

• Added sorting to the Saved page

• Added option to change route settings while already navigating

• Added address/intersection search when maps like City Navigator are used

• Added option to save portion of an activity

• Added support for transferring and receiving waypoints in Garmin Mode

• Added page to test inReach service

• Added support for waypoint and geocache symbol overrides

• Added map layer toggle for inReach messages

• Fixed issues where course review pages were sometimes missing or showing bad statistics

• Fixed some issues with the map layers list not showing all maps correctly

• Fixed Mark Waypoint shortcut in dark mode

• Fixed touch zones for arrow keys on some keyboards

• Fixed Tracking Glance sometimes showing wrong status

• Fixed issue adjusting screen brightness with buttons

• Fixed emojis not showing in notifications list

• Fixed possible crash when deleting SOS messages

• Fixed possible route recalculation issues when going off course

• Fixed waypoint averaging to not change elevation

• Fixed battery drawing for large data field

• Fixed possible issues with data displayed on review pages

• Fixed satellite numbers displayed for some constellations

• Fixed possible issue with GPS mode after stopping GCM LiveTrack

• Fixed possible issues with barometer settings

• Updated satellites page to show all satellites

Still disappointing.

It's possible this is for the H1i Plus only and not the regular H1, it's not clear.

The H1 and H1i Plus get the same update, so the change log applies to both. Of course inReach related fixes do not apply to the H1.

The eTrex Touch also gets the same firmware updates as the H1 series except for those changes that are related to the specific additional hardware that the H1 series has but the eTrex Touch does not.

Has anyone else opened tickets with Garmin support about this? I’d suggest anyone in this thread and whoever comes across this not commenting does as well. I have a feeling a bunch of support tickets about a problem would get more attention than this thread would, not sure they pay attention to these boards. Although I did mention this link during interaction it’s Garmin and I see them commenting around here sometimes, so maybe?