Your Raspberry Pi wants this Anker SD card reader for Christmas

Anker Card Reader
Anker Card Reader (Image credit: Jerry Hildenbrand / Android Central)

The Raspberry Pi comes with its own SD card slot, but for the thing to actually work you need to keep the card holding the operating system in place. That means you need another solution in order to copy files to and from your tiny computer.

Thankfully, the Pi also comes with a couple of USB 3.0 ports so a card reader is an easy-peasy solution. And this card reader from Anker is a great one, especially now that it's on sale ahead of Cyber Monday.

I love the little Raspberry Pi and I think it makes for a great small personal computer. And believe it or not, there is some great Linux software for photo editing that's free and easy to install. Yes, the Pi has enough power to edit your photos, too!

The problem is that there's no way to move the photos from a camera's SD card to the Pi. The Pi does have an SD card slot but that's where you put the card with the operating system and everything stops working if you remove it. But the Raspberry Pi happens to have a couple of USB 3.0 ports, so a card reader is just the ticket.

After trying and breaking some of the really cheap card readers you can buy I decided to look for something that would last longer. I stumbled across this reader from Anker and snatched a couple of them up. Money well spent!

Lo and behold, Amazon has put these into its big bucket of Cyber Monday deals and you can save a few bucks if you buy one now. While I use them to copy photos, they're great for copying any files from a device that uses an SD card. You can even leave it plugged in for extra storage since you probably have a few SD cards lying around now that phone makers have decided you don't need them.

I love finding stuff that I use on sale at Amazon because it's so easy to recommend them to you. And if you need a card reader for any computer — this works on Windows, macOS, ChromeOS, and Linux — I highly recommend this one.

Jerry Hildenbrand
Senior Editor — Google Ecosystem

Jerry is an amateur woodworker and struggling shade tree mechanic. There's nothing he can't take apart, but many things he can't reassemble. You'll find him writing and speaking his loud opinion on Android Central and occasionally on Twitter.