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(More customer reviews)I purchased this to get the free super saver shipping so it worked out to cost me about $1.50 instead of paying for shipping. However, estimated delivery was around 15 days? Doh! ;-)
Anyway, I wanted a card that was at least a class 4 to record HD video with my pansonic point and shoot camera. I've seen a lot of people argue about what the class of the card means and it's actual transfer rates so I thought I'd be safe getting one thats in the middle of the road. There are 4 classes, starting with 2 and ending at 6. Supposedly getting a class 6 doesn't always mean that it will perform better than say a class 2. The old way of classing these cards was to use the X factor. A 133X card would transfer about 20megs a second and so on but I've seen a 4gb usb stick that was 150x that transfered over 40megs a second. Even that way of classing the cards failed to hold up to the reality of benchmarks. So, if I'm going to write a review I may as well make it worth reading by doing some psudo-scientific tests and compare it to an older Crucial 4gb Class 6 card I purchased about 5 months ago. Technically the Crucial with it's mighty class 6 rating should blow the HP out of the water. We'll see.
To do the test, I installed the latest Sisoftware Sandra 2010 benchmarking software and gave these card the once over. Sandra is considered by many to be one of the best benchmarking software programs around! I conducted the test on my brand new Asus 1000HE Netbook which has a really nice SDHC card reader built in and running windows 7 premium. This is the true definition of a "real world test".
Sisandra comes with a large catalog of SDHC cards they tested themselves and this allows you to compare the results showing the best ones all the way down to the poorest performer. You can even compare your SDHC card to a sata hard drive or a 2gb usb flash drive. Whatever floats your boat. The test starts by transfering 512 bites and working it's way up to 512megs and it examines the speed at which it handles the constant stream of data going in and coming out.
My older Crucial 4GB Class 6 shows 2408 ops/minute with an endurance factor of 85.1%. This HP class 4 shows 2261 ops/min with an endurance of 95.3%. They tell me that higher numbers are better. As you can see, there is very little diffference between the Crucial and the HP except I paid about $25 for the Crucial. Both these cards are perfectly fine for ordinary applications and have enough bandwidth to handle at least 720p HD video from your digital point and shoot camera. Most digital cameras limit the recording to 15 minutes anyway, so if all you want to do is capture video with your point and shoot, then you should have good results with this card. Overall, both my cards are ranked #3 in the world of storage devices. If you plan on capturing 1080p HD video you'll probably want to invest more money in better performing cards. Othewise you might get dropped frames as you push the limits of these slower cards. That would create a stuttering effect in your video that you would notice as the camera pans back and forth. You do pretty much get what you pay for here but sometimes you pay double for something that doesn't deliver much more. The old saying comes to mind. "Caveat Emptor - Buyer beware!"
The fastest SD card was the 1GB Peak Xtreme which ran about 8000 ops/min. The fastest SDHC was a Toshiba 16GB which benchmarked at 4950 ops/min. Thats the kind of card you'll want for 1080p video because not only does it handle the bandwidth but it has a lot of capacity to capture those huge 1080p movie files. It won't take you long to fill up 16gb.
To give you a sense of perspective, the 80gb apple ipod transfers at 4422 ops/min. The Viking 1gb compact flash card can transfer at a whopping speed of 232 ops/min. and yes, Viking is still in business and even sell a 64meg SD card here on amazon. Must be useful for some kind of old technology like ancient gaming systems.
Hope this helps you decide what to buy! Take it easy!
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HP 4 GB Class 4 SDHC Flash Memory Card L1878A#707-EFHP secure digital high-capacity 4 GB memory card ideal for the latest digital cameras & camcorders. Please verify that your device such as cellular phone or digital camera supports SDHC cards.SDHC cards are not compatible with standard SD host devices and card readers, and will only work on SDHC host devices.Check with your device manufacturer to see if the device supports SDHC before purchase.
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