CF speed: cheap Transcend faster than Kingston

Laurence wrote on 2/27/2008, 6:54 AM
I bought three 16 GB CF cards for my new Z7: two Kingston Memory ones from B&H and one really cheap $79 Transcend card from eCost.com.

I fully expected the Kingston Memory card to outperform the cheap Transcend and I just bought it "to see if I could get away with it". Anyway, the Transcend seemed to work fine, but I am getting errors on the Kingston. One got so fouled up that I had to send it back with an RMA.

Anyway, that seemed strange so I searched around and found a memory card utility that would do a speed test here:

http://www.flashmemorytoolkit.com/

I am amazed to see that the el cheapo Transcend outperforms the far more expensive Kingston Memory chip by a pretty wide margin.

Kingston Memory:


Transcend:


Who'd have thought!? Anyway, if you have a Z7, just buy the Transcend. Don't worry that it's so cheap that it shouldn't work. It does.

Comments

craftech wrote on 2/27/2008, 8:02 AM
That's been a pretty consistent pattern with Transcend cards, both SD and CF.

Cards also vary between Read Speeds and Write Speeds and the camera you put them in.

Simple Tech has also been pretty consistent.

John
Laurence wrote on 2/27/2008, 8:19 AM
It makes me think that if the EX1 wasn't DRM protected from using non-Sony cards, that the ultra cheap Transcend SxS 16GB and 32GB cards would likely work just fine.