Round-Up: 15 microSDHC Cards, Benchmarked And Reviewed

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With rated write performance as high as 10 MB/s and capacities as high as 32 GB, there's plenty of choice in the microSDHC marketplace. Do the contenders actually hit their performance targets? Interestingly, some of them are actually quite a bit better!

SanDisk microSDHC (Class 4, 8 GB) And Mobile Ultra microSDHC (Class 4, 16 GB)

The US-based manufacturer SanDisk is, according to its press releases, the largest manufacturer of flash-based products in the world. Befitting this position, SanDisk offers a complete portfolio of memory cards. The company presents the microSDHC cards on its site’s Mobile Memory section, aiming them at owners of smartphones.

The Mobile Ultra microSDHC card is intended for transferring files between a mobile phone and a PC, which is why it comes with a USB card reader. We tested both the 8 GB SanDisk microSDHC card and the 16 GB SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC. According to the manufacturer, both are Class 4 products.

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Class 4 is a real understatement for the Mobile Ultra microSDHC model. Defying its designation, our test sample ran rings around many of the Class 10 cards and exhibited good to excellent read and write performance in all benchmarks. Clocking in at 22.8 MB/s, it even took the lead in our sequential read test. However, it is not quite as fast in the sequential write benchmark, achieving 15.8 MB/s. The card also demonstrates very strong random read and write performance, again winning first place in these categories.

The 8 GB SanDisk microSDHC cannot quite live up to the results demonstrated by its fast Mobile Ultra brother. It really is a Class 4 card, clocking in at 11.6 MB/s sequential reads and 6.1 MB/s sequential writes. Compared to other Class 4 cards, it is fairly slow. Interestingly, the Class 4 Silicon Power microSDHC memory card exhibits precisely the same speed in all benchmarks.

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Manuel Masiero
38 Comments Comment from the forums
  • sayakbiswas
    interesting read, but there should hv been more 32gb sticks.....they r quite affordable nowadays...
    Reply
  • BulkZerker
    sayakbiswasinteresting read, but there should hv been more 32gb sticks.....they r quite affordable nowadays...
    I wouldn't consider $40+ (shipped) affordable. Also you have to think that Tom's isn't necessarily buying these cards for personal or business use. 9x out of 10 these cards are donated by their respective companies. Or a warehouse such as Tiger Direct/Newegg.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    last summer I needed some memory sticks for my video camera and decided on a pair of 16GB PNY Professional SD cards which I have been very happy with. Read maxes out my USB port, and writing is consistently above 19MB/s during file transfers.
    Reply
  • In your test setup, I could not find a description of the interface that you use to connect these cards to the PC.
    Reply
  • CaedenV
    BulkZerkerI wouldn't consider $40+ (shipped) affordable. Also you have to think that Tom's isn't necessarily buying these cards for personal or business use. 9x out of 10 these cards are donated by their respective companies. Or a warehouse such as Tiger Direct/Newegg.$40 IS affordable for fast and dense media. You do not put fast huge SD cards in a cell phone or cheap camera, you put them in high end still cameras, and budget (but quality) video cameras. Considering when I picked mine up the nearest competition for fast SD cards were in the $80+ range, and I picked up 2 at that price I would say that $40 is quite good. If you have a cheaper camera, there is much cheaper (but still good) media out there.
    Reply
  • stridervm
    Would it be possible that Sandisk gave you a mislabeled Class 4 Micro SD card? Quite suspicious that they would have Class 4 cards that would perform like at least a class 6 one....
    Reply
  • The_Trutherizer
    I've always wondered how good these things would do in a RAID configuration. Say you got a Raid controller capable of handling 32 drives and you found a way to hook up microSD cards to it. What performance would you get? And would it be economically viable at all?
    Reply
  • sayakbiswas
    BulkZerkerI wouldn't consider $40+ (shipped) affordable. Also you have to think that Tom's isn't necessarily buying these cards for personal or business use. 9x out of 10 these cards are donated by their respective companies. Or a warehouse such as Tiger Direct/Newegg.

    40$ for 32gb MicroSDHC is affordable when you consider the fact that 64gb MicroSDXC cards costs 280$+. I am employing a Nikon D7000 dslr when im thinking about these cards.
    Reply
  • theprov
    Can i assume that a "32 gb class 10 kingston micro sd" perform at least as much as a 16 gb? I'm buying a 32 gb soon, and i don't want to find out bad surprises....
    Reply
  • happyballz
    Should have tested them all in one size or in two different sizes (one small one big).. performance does vary, and sometimes significantly because of design mistakes between the sizes etc.

    On a side note what is the deal with tom's being such crappy optimized webpage? I open 5-6 tabs and everything crawls to a molasses-slow on my laptop. I can open 15-20 tabs in other sites no problem.

    Reply