10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Memory at 75 cents per gigabyte
Date of Review: Nov 18, 2008
The Bottom Line: Having both micro and standard SD options is a plus. No miniSD adapter though.
I have multiple items that use SD memory cards; digital cameras, a karaoke microphone, a camcorder, and occasionally an MP3 player if I'm not using my iPod. As a result, I find that I'll stockpile SD cards if I see a good deal. You never know when you'll need to take 10 hours of video and not be able to transfer data from the camera to a computer so that you can reuse the card:-) So when Woot.com had a two-for-Tuesday deal of 2 Kingston 2GB microSD cards for $2.99 (plus $5 shipping), I went ahead and placed an order.
What is nice about the Kingston card is that it really is two cards; it starts off as a microSD card (the size of your smallets fingernail) and comes with an adapter to make it a standard sized SD card (about the size of a stamp). So that gives you the ability to use it with current devices like cell phones and still pop it into your digital camera if you want. Plus, the adapter is a little bigger and therefore makes the card easier to keep track of.
I've only had to use this pair of cards a half dozen times or so, but I have not run into issues with accessing or moving data. I did notice that data moved a little slower than I expected, taking me maybe five minutes to move several hundred MB of data to the card (the published data transfer rates are 8.8 MB/s read and 6.5 MB/s write). That may affect digital photography, especially if you're using nicer cameras that take larger images. For many users though, the speed difference probably isn't detectable. The images my camera takes are under 8 MB (a 6MP camera) so it should be fine, but I'm planning on these cards being more of a backup than regular use cards. If I have my camera information right, I can take something like 700 pictures on one of these cards or record about 100 minutes of video, so two backup cards along with my normal pair of 2GB SD cards should get me through pretty much any vacation!
Overall verdict- At the price I paid, it's hard to beat. I generally see these cards going for between $8-20 online, so I suspect that there will be deals out there pushing it below the $5 mark. If you can catch one of those deals without much rebate pain being involved and you are an active user of mobile devices that have these types of cards, it's worth a pickup. It would have been nice if it included a minSD adapter, but it isn't a big deal for me right now because none of my devices use that slot. Grade: B
