With our lives becoming more and more mobile there is a need to take more 'stuff' with us, and by stuff I mean data. Most cellphones today utilize the microSD card system and a lot of them can handle the newer SDHC cards as well so you can fit even more data on them to take your music, photos and even movies with you if you wish.
Today for review I've got the Transcend microSDHC Class 6 Flash Card, it's your standard type microSD card and includes the adapter for regular SD cards as well. I put it up against two other brands of microSD cards I've got on hand, let's see how well it performs…
Transcend microSDHC class 6 Flash card
Tech Specs,Features or the Basic Info:
Transcend microSDHC class 6 Flash card
Transcend’s high capacity, high performance microSDHC Class 6 memory cards are perfect for today’s advanced compact microSDHC compliant device. Fully compatible with the SD 2.0 standard, Transcend’s SDHC cards are rated Class 6, which means guaranteed performance and write speeds of no less than 6MB/s.
Features
– Fully compatible with SD 2.0 Standards
– Only 10% the size of a standard SD card
– SDHC Class 6 compliant
– MicroSD adapter allows it to be used in standard SD Card slots, compatible with all SDHC-labeled host devices
– Easy to use, plug-and-play operation
– Built-in Error Correcting Code (ECC) to detect and correct transfer errors
– Complies with Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI) portable device requirements
– Supports Content Protection for Recordable Media (CPRM)
– Allows In System Programming (ISP) for updating firmware
– Supports auto-standby, power-off and sleep modes
– Mechanical write-protection switch
– RoHS compliant
– Lifetime Warranty
Specs:
Size: 11mm x 15mm x 1.0mm
Op. Voltage: 2.7V~3.6V
Op. Temperature: -25°C(-13°F) to 85°C(185°F)
Durability: 10,000 insertion/removal cycles
Weight: 0.4g
Price: $19.99 plus shipping at NewEgg at time of review
A Better Look at Things
:
The packaging for the Transcend 4gb SDHC card is your standard, ever popular sealed plastic clamshell. We can see the card and adapter through the front of the package, and there's even a little caution on the bottom of the package that says: 'Due to its size, please handle with care'. On the back of the package is listed of course the basic specs and features, there's even a diagram on how to open the package…
Upon opening up the package I was greeted with a whole lot of junk besides the memory card, was there a real reason to add all of this stuff with the card? They could have easily fit the user manual and warranty on one small piece of paper and not included the advertising, more than half of the weight of this package is junk.
The card and adapter come in their own little carrying case for protection and transport if need be.
It looks like any other microSD card, nothing really to look at.
Installation, Testing and Comparison
For testing I'm using HDTach RW from SimpliSoftware and my Micro Drive USB card reader from Brando WorkShop (review HERE ). I'm comparing the Transcend to an ATP 512mb microSD card and a Sandisk 256mb microSD card that I have on hand.
Here are the screenshots from HDTach:
and here's the graph with the results compared, higher scores are better for Burst, Average Read and Average Write, while lower scores are better for Random Access.
Well the Transcend card did not hit the advertised 6mb/s write speed, it fell a little under that, but you can see the Burst and Average Read speeds just blow the competition away, and even the Random Access is the better of the three cards.
I got the Transcend microSDHC card to use with my ATT Tilt cellphone, and honestly I can 'feel' no difference between the cards while they're in my phone, I just needed the extra storage and that's what I got so I'm happy.
Summary:
The Transcend 4gb microSDHC card may not have hit the advertised write speeds but it's still very fast, much faster than the others I have on hand for comparison.
For a price of about $20 you can add 4gigs of storage to your portable device, I think it's well worth it for that price.
Before getting the Transcend microSD card I was using the ATP card with my phone and honestly I can feel no difference in the actual usage of the card while in my phone. Sure if you use the card for things other than additional storage then you might not like the lower speeds but for me it does exactly what I need it to do, adds for storage space cheaply.
DragonSteelMods gives the Transcend microSDHC class 6 Flash card a 4.5 out of 5 score and our Recommended Award as well.
Pros:
-Fast
-Large capacity
-Low cost
Cons:
-Didn't hit the advertised 6mb/s write speeds
-A lot of advertising junk included with card (save a tree please..)
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