Play.com 32GB SDHC Class 10 Memory Card

Arrived this morning, and of course first things first - benchmarking!

The results were surprising - a Class 10 card such as this should offer an average of 10MB/s write speed. The results I got on my machine - using the Disk Utility app built in to Ubuntu - were:

Minimum Read Rate: 11.2MB/s
Maximum Read Rate: 11.4MB/s
Average Read Rate: 11.3MB/s

Minimum Write Rate: 1.9MB/s
Maximum Write Rate: 8.6MB/s
Average Write Rate: 3.4MB/s

Maximum write rate occured at the very 'start' of the SD card, with the remaining 95% of the card zig-zagging in typical fashion between 6MB/s and 2MB/s write speed.

As a comparison, the Class 6 card I'm replacing with this one comes from another vendor (ByteStor) and offers lower average performance but less variation in minimum/maximum reading and writing speeds.

That said, I have tried recording full 1080i and 720p AVCHD video using my Panasonic GF2 and didn't encounter any issues. This typically requires at least a Class 6 card to avoid stuttering. Since this is the fastest I expect to be writing data to this card, it should suffice for my needs.

I look forward to seeing if other people get better benchmark results with their cards.

Second time reviewing as it was deleted when i reviewed it for spelling mistakes!

Tested fully, 29.7GB formatted as Fat32. (due to the way memory figures are given. )

(remember that memory deals better with bigger files than smaller ones and most digital camreas save Jpegs as files of over 2MB now if it's halfway decent!)

1MB files read 12MB/s Write 8.9MB/s
2MB and upwards file sizes Read 17.2 MB/s Write 12.3MB/s

My Sony HX9v records 1080p50 at 3.5MB/s so this is easily fast enough for that. (28Mbps = 3.5MBps) Blu Ray is 36Mbps!

All in all a bargain, and arrived within 2 days of ordering, so very impresed, Play's customer services seem to have been excellent lately!

The main difference between very expensive SD and cheapr ones is the consistency of the wafers of memory printed i.e sandisk get the best of the wafer, as they pay most etc. and generics get 'ordinary' quality ones. Provided you make backups to your HD etc these cards are very very good value and I've had a play card in my phone for a year without data loss, which ismore than i could say for a prior SONY branded M2 memory stick micro!

19,50MBs Read 18,20MBs Write. For the price of this card is okay would recommend getting one .

Using Disk Utility under Ubuntu I got 7.3MB/s read, 1.2MB/s write.

Needless to say, I'm a long way from impressed by this at the moment, especially when the specifications promise over four times this speed.

I've just used one and got an average 12mb/s write.