Correction:

Though the original SD spec was defined for 2.0 GB and under, there are 4.0 GB SD (not SDHC) cards available. These should be mentioned for older devices manufactured prior to the revised spec, and most current GPS units. Though they are not universally compatible with older equipment (you pretty much have to gamble on one to see if it works), they do present a possible option for older gear.

Well written article and very informative. Now I know what to look for when purchasing my next sd.....I hate waiting on the camera to store a picture when I want to take the next shot!

I'm looking for SDHC card but this article is absolutely confusing. I was looking for the Silicon Power results but there are a lot of mistakes or mistyping in the article. On some of the I/O meter charts it's line is light gray on some other it is dark grey. On some pages there is the 16GB listed, on some other there is the 32GB version. Due to all these mistakes this article became absolutely confusing and unreliable!

As usual, a well written and informative article from the Pros at Toms. Thank you.

Bought the transcend 16gb yesterday for $33 looks like I didn't do to badly, I'm happy with 15mb/s read and I bet it does faster than 19.7 read with a quicker reader.

What about a price/GB chart or a price/performatnce chart? If one is 3% faster, but costs 40% more, that's a "no deal".

I really think someone should come out with an external RAID array for these things. You can fit a bunch of these in a very small space, and if you stack the performance/capacity in parallel you could potentially get some amazing numbers. Make one massive RAID50!

If you use a d-SLR, the speed is well worth the price. I have a 266X Transcend Compact Flash card and it works great. The bottleneck is my camera's buffer and not the memory card when shooting RAW or RAW+JPEG.

Welldone! I was looking for something like this. Quite useful.

IMHO, reviews like this aren't much good without a cost comparison. Bang for the buck and all that.

I'm so glad I found this article; I just bought a Nikon D60 digital SLR, and have no idea what memory card to get for it. I want something with fast writes, as the camera can shoot up to 3 MB/s, but I don't care how long it takes to transfer pictures to the computer.

While I have a digital camera, I normally use a 28-year old Minolta SLR, as well as a Holga and other film cameras, so memory cards and lens systems are very confusing to me.

Sandisk SD cards always worked well for me. Even their 4GB Ultra II model works great in my Canon camera. Not the fastest but it's fast enough for my needs at a low price point and not one of them ever failed on me.

Costco usually carries em at decent prices.

Well I use a SDHC 4gb from Veho, which is class 6 and excellent..But really it is a *lot* about bang fer Buck. The card was as cheap as other lower rated cards .. so why not? I would like to see the use of these as storage and storage extenders on all manner of devices explored. I use mine as a surrogate blank DVD. A Cheap 32gb would be lovely..

I'd like to add that Transcend 150x is probably the only one with SLC memory. Advantage over MLC is that SLC can handle 10x more read/write cycles is more reliable in low temperatures. If you look up the price of Transcend 150x SDHC cards you'll see that they cost somewhat twice as much per GB as regular SDHC class 6. Here's what I found on SLC vs MLC whitpaper from Super Talent:
"Single-level cell (SLC) and multi-level cell (MLC) Flash memory are similar in their design. MLC Flash devices cost less and allow for higher storage density. SLC Flash devices provide faster write performance and greater reliability, even at temperatures above the operating range of MLC Flash devices"

I would have appreciated some discussion about the speed of CF relative to Flash Memory Camcorders such as the Canon FS Series. Isn't that where consumers really need the faster cards anyways?

Silicon Power SDHC class 6 is excellent choice for movie recorders. You might have noted that camcorders are moving towards flash memory for movie recording and to record the high resolution HD movies at real time speed, high speed cards are required, and high speed SDHC silicon power memory cards to my opinion is really a good choice.

Great article but it is lacking. You mentioned but didn't list the OCZ Gold Series, the Extreme III 30MB series or the Sandisk VideoHD series of cards all of which are options I think need to be addressed.

Should retest with a faster card reader ... SanDisk ImageMate Multi-Card Reader ... 30MB max.