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13 SDHC Memory Cards Reviewed
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Table of contents
- 1 – SD Memory Cards for Professionals
- 2 – Kingston Class 4 and Class 6, 32 GB and 8 GB
- 3 – Lexar Platinum II and Professional
- 4 – OCZ SDHC 8 GB, Patriot SDHC 16 GB
- 5 – PNY Optima and Optima Pro (32 GB, 4 GB)
- 6 – SanDisk Extreme III 4 GB, Silicon Power SDHC 16 GB
- 7 – Transcend Class 6 16 GB, 150X 4 GB
(Ed.: For more memory card performance data, including SDHC and Compact Flash cards, please check out our most updated charts. You can find the SDHC charts here and the Compact Flash charts right here.)
The prices of portable memory cards have decreased to almost ridiculous levels: 8 GB SDHC cards now start at only $12. However, enthusiasts don’t want just any memory card—they want one that delivers high write throughput for their devices such as digital cameras, and fast reads, so they can copy contents to their systems quickly. These elite products are much more expensive, so we invited eight popular brands to a shootout.
SD Card Details
The Secure Digital (SD) card was invented by SanDisk in 2001 and was based on the multi-media card (MMC) standard. Technically, SD is similar to MMC, but adds digital rights management based on CPRM. SD cards also feature a write protection switch, but it is not a hardware feature: the client device has to handle both settings appropriately.
SD, SDHD
The 2 GB capacity defined by the SD 1.1 standard wasn’t enough as card sizes grew, so the SD 2.0 or SDHC standard was added. It allows for capacities of up to 32 GB today; the standard is potentially ready for capacities of up to 2 TB. SDXC will follow next year, as 32 GB may remain the limit for the SDHC standard. Note that SDHC and SD cards are identical from the outside, so be sure your device supports SDHC before purchasing such a card (4 GB and up).
Classes 2, 4, 6
The first SD cards could be read at 3.6 MB/s and written at 0.8 MB/s. Faster cards were required by the increasing resolutions of digital cameras, as well as more demanding consumers. As a result, SDHC was divided into three classes: 2, 4 and 6; the numbers represent the minimum sustainable write throughput in MB/s.
Applications
It’s not only high resolution digital SLR cameras that require fast memory cards, allowing them to write several photos per second onto the storage device. Another key application is multi-purpose, high-speed mobile storage, or using these cards as system drives via USB or eSATA card readers.
We asked Kingston, Lexar, OCZ, Patriot, PNY, Sandisk, Silicon Power and Transcend to send us their fastest and highest capacity SD cards for review. Let’s look at the 13 cards between 4 GB and 32 GB that we received.
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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!
that IO meter plot is very hard to read, even when zooming in using firefox on a dell 3007wfp-hc
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.
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.
Agreed! Not to mention with increasing resolutions for DSLR you need faster and bigger cards.
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.