Kingston SD 512MB - Testing
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Just how fast (or rather, how slow) is this SD card from Kingston? To test, I put both a Sandisk CF card in my Toshiba e830, as well as the SD card (the device has both slots) and timed the transfer of a DivX compressed episode of Trailer Park Boys: "Mr Lahey's got my porno tape."
The CF card took 7 minutes and 55 seconds to write the 109MB file. The Kingston SD card took nearly two minutes less to perform the same operation, turning in a 5 minute and 58 second performance. For read operations, the positions were much closer. In fact the CF card won by 10 seconds, sending the 109MB file back to the PC in 6:30, while the SD card took 6:40.
What this should tell you is how painful it can be to fill up a 512MB card, or use it to transfer files back to the computer if you plan to use it as a storage device that is pulled from often. Erasing the card is much faster, a nearly instantaneous operation. Still, you should expect to spend nearly half an hour if you want to fill the whole card in one shot. This is one of the selling points for getting a faster "ultra" speed card if you can afford to do so. Many of those claim to have an 8-9MB/s transfer rate, obviously much higher than that of the two cards we used for testing today.
What the Kingston 512MB SD card does for you is provide cheap storage, and large amounts of it. You can buy up to 1GB models, something that wasn't available until recently. This does put it at less of a disadvantage size wise compared to the options available to CF (4GB). If you have a camera phone which supports SD, or an MP3 player, it's hard to argue against what this product has to offer. Just don't expect blazing transfer times.
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