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Lexar Premium 60x 8 GB SDHC
by JJJJ
Another day, another memory card review - this time for the 8GB Lexar 'Premium' SD which has a current retail price of £19.99 from amazon.co.uk. The price is a little odd to be honest, as the newer (and faster) version of this card costs only £7.99.
I purchased this particular card on the strength of the Lexar cards which I ... have previously owned and have been very impressed with. The card isn't Lexar's quickest on the market (that title is reserved for the cards in Lexar's 'Professional' series) - but I only use the card for transferring files between my computers, and not in any speed-reliant devices (high-res video recorders, or DSLR cameras etc).
Design, Appearance & Performance
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I know looks aren't important in a device of this nature, but the Lexar appears professional with a black body and a silver and blue trim. The write speed is rated as 60x, which, on paper translates as Class 4 (it can maintain a write speed of at least 4mbs per second).
In the five months that I have owned the product, I haven't encountered any card errors or random losses of data - so no issues to report performance-wise. As I previously mentioned, the card isn't specifically designed for devices which require blistering write speeds - however, it *can* actually cope with whatever i've thrown at it. For the purposes of this review I gave it a once-over to check its speed, and it just about manages continuous shooting mode in my Nikon camera, and 720p video is similarly not an issue.
Final Word
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Overall, the 8GB Lexar Premium SD is a good product which combines reliability and a solid performance. However, in regards to value for money the card isn't the best - the sensible thing to do would be to buy the faster version of this card which costs over £10 less.
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Lexar Premium 40x 4 GB Memory Stick Pro Duo
by blissman70
Everyone and anyone owns, or knows someone who owns, a memory card, memory stick, pen drive or what ever you want to call them, they all do the same thing, they all store such things as images, music, data, videos and what ever else you can think of storing.
Most cards, sticks, pens are basically the same, they're either slim and ... small, being designed to fit into such things as cameras, camcorders and certain games consoles, whilst other memory devices are a little chunkier and designed to slide into a USB port on a PC.
It is the first on my list that I am going to tell you about today, but not just any old slim and small memory card, not an SDHC memory card and certainly not a micro SDHC memory card. It is in fact a memory card which is specifically designed to fit into one brand of electrical equipment, that brand being the well know name of Sony.
When Sony brought out some of their small devices they decided that they would not allow a standard SD card to work in most of them, deciding instead to bring out their own 'special' card calling it a memory stick ProDuo, which could only be used in Sony devices, this is a bit naughty of them as most 'standard SD cards are quite cheap but Sony ProDuo decided to sell their new ProDuo's at what can only be described as 'extortionate' prices, which is very naughty of them indeed.
But luckily, since then, several companies have decide to join the ProDuo market and brought out their own style of card, undercutting the Sony branded cards in the process, much to everyone's delight, (except Sony of course).
One of those particular ProDuo cards are from another well known company who somehow manage to sell their cards for a fraction of the Sony branded ones. The company that I am talking about is a company called Lexar who price themselves on making reliable and good quality memory storage unit, such as pen drives, flash drives, memory stick, SD cards and more.
And as I own a Sony Sureshot camera I had to buy a ProDuo memory card, first purchasing a 1GB card from Sony themselves, which did put a dent in my wallet, but worked as it should have done. So when I saw this particular 4GB ProDuo at a much lower price than the Sony equivalent, (the 4GB Sony one being around £22.00), I decided to get it to boost the memory so that I could hold more videos and pictures on my camera without having to keep transferring them onto my PC.
Anyway, enough of the waffling, it's time to tell you a bit about this particular card.
Firstly, Lexar are a good brand and, after using there product before, I can safely say that they are a brand that I trust quite well indeed and this little device is no exception.
It claims to give faster transfer rates and after a few tests I can't see much difference in the transfer speeds than the 'Sony' pro duo, only this one's a lot cheaper.
And like all memory cards it has a little 'switch' on the side which locks the card and protects the data that is on it from being overwritten.
On initial use there's no need to find any drives as it finds them itself, taking a few seconds to do so, then you're ready to use it.
As I said before, it's not the same size as a 'standard' memory card, with it being a little smaller at 30mm by 20mm, but apart from the size the style and design are more or less the same.
As for putting it into such things as printers or even you PC, it won't go directly in most systems, due to it being a little smaller, although it will go into some. But don't lose faith as there are many adapters out there that will happily accommodate this memory stick and allow it to transfer the data on it onto other devices.
As for the actual storage capabilities, it's got a good size memory, being 4GBs which for the record can hold about 2000 good quality pictures and several hours of video footage, (although all this depends on how large or small the data is).
It can be used in several Sony devices, such as games system, camcorders and even some Sony phones, apparently, but I have not tried it out in any of them devices as yet. I use it for my Sony 'Sureshot' camera and I managed to get almost 1500 images onto it with plenty of room to spare, (this was to test it out and to be honest I wish I'd transferred the images as I went along because when it came down to getting nearly 1500 of them transferred to my laptop took me quite a bit of time indeed).
But on further tests, once I'd transferred the main pictures, I tried moving just 100 at one time, with each image being approximately 1.25MB each, (totalling 132MB),
it managed to transfer them in less than forty second, which is very good indeed, with he same size folder from the Sony brand work ProDuo card transferring at about the same speed, (although this does depend a bit on your system and your USB speed).
The card has no problem storing the photo's either, neither does it have any problems transferring the content. With this I mean that I have had some cards that, after taking a picture, when trying to get it onto my PC some images have not been able to transfer, with a message stating that the format is wrong or the file is corrupt, even though the pictures are all the same format.
In all this is a very cheap way to keep your memory up on your Sony devices, and as it's a lot cheaper that the Sony branded models of the same style, doing exactly the same job, it's well worth spending your money on.
As for the price, this 4GB version sells on Amazon for a low price of £8.99, which is a price well worth paying
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Lexar Professional 8 GB Class 6 SDHC
by JJJJ
The fact that I shoot photographs in the high quality 'RAW' format (rather than as compressed JPEG files), means that I frequently end up with photos that are of multiple megabytes. Of course, this also means that small capacity SD cards don't really cut the mustard, and I'm always on the lookout for reliable high capacity cards. As i've ... used Lexar cards in the past, I decided to stick with the brand and invest in their 8gb 133x SDHC - but how does it perform? At this stage of the review it's important to note that the card is of the 'SDHC' variety, which means that although it's of exactly the same dimensions as the standard SD, you'll need to make sure that your card reader is SDHC compatible (many of the older ones aren't).
Appearance and Price + Speed
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Although appearance should perhaps be the least of you concerns when buying a memory card (don't judge a book by its cover!), the Lexar's design is quite striking with a gold label featuring black trim. In terms of the cost, the card is available from amazon.co.uk for £17.40 - personally, I would argue that the price offers very good value for money when you firstly consider the huge capacity, and secondly the trustworthy nature of the Lexar brand. The card's speed is very impressive - it's able to write HD video from my Nikon camera without any problems, and also comfortably maintain a continuous shooting mode (stills) of over three frames per second. Officially, the speed is marked at 133x, which works out at a claimed 20mb per second velocity. In my own tests I would argue that the write speed is closer to 17 or 18 mb/s, but that probably down to the individual nuances of the equipment I'm using the card in.
Reliability & Final Word
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Reliability wise, I would argue that the Lexar brand is second to none - i've used a number of Lexar cards in the past, and they haven't ever let me down with corrupted files or card errors. To further add peace of mind, the card comes with a twelve month manufacturer's warranty - although in the time that I've owned the card, I'm happy to report that it hasn't given me any problems whatsoever. Overall then, I can only award the Lexar 8gb 133x SDHC card five stars due to general reliability, speed, and the fact that £17 is a small price to pay when you consider the huge capacity.
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