A-DATA Class 6 SDHC Flash Memory Card
by Adaso/Adastra Engineering Center
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of A-DATA Class 6 SDHC Flash Memory Card
Customer Review: Speed grade may not be correct
Summary: 2 Stars
Watch out! May be inferior product. I got a speed grade class 2 (slow) even though package says class 6 (fast).
I bought two of these A-DATA 16GB Turbo SDHC "Class 6" memory cards for my Canon Vixia HF-100 camcorder. I put them in (one at a time -duh) and the HF-100 reports one card as CLASS 6 -Yeah!, but the other as CLASS 2 -Boo!
A real disappointment for me as the HF-100 needs class 4 or better to record in FXP mode. I get a nasty popup on the view finder "Class 2 memory. Cannot record in FXP mode". Bummer!
I can't help but throw in the specutation on how they are able to get such a great cost and beat the competition: buy reducing quality, accepting more marginal parts in their test programs, and use tier II foundaries. There are lots of ways to cut cost in production, but in the end it comes to quality. I am certain that every part that leaves the factory is tested, that is normally how semiconductors are fabricated, so why then did the part I receive not meet spec? Surely it must be because the parts are marginal and they are not testing all corner cases. Certainly companies like SanDisk who have a much broader business at risk would not risk lowering quality standards to achieve short profit gains.
In conclusion, if you want a 16GB part and are willing to take some risk on performance (speed/integrity) this might be the part for you.
If you absolutely need Class 6, and cannot be bothered to ship things back when they don't work - like me, or are very concerned about data integrity, you may want to go with a more well known supplier who has an established qualty record and name to uphold.
I should rate this product a 1 because of the performance issues, but in the end I was able to use the slower speed part in my Casio Exilim EX-Z1050 camera and it works ok there (no speed grade requirement on that camera). So I manage to salvage a bad situation.
Now I am going to order another 16GB card. This time I will try Transcend. Ha! No they are not SanDisk! But the HF-100 recognized a Transcend 8GB card I had laying around as a class 6, so maybe the 16GB will be ok too. I know I am taking some risk with Transcend too, but I just can't bring myself to fork out the dough for SanDisk. After I loose all my vacation videos and pics I may reconsider my penny pinching tactics though -we'll see.
Update: the two Transcend 16GB parts were recognized my the HF-100 just fine
Customer Review: A Great Addition To Your Digital Camera
Summary: 5 Stars
My review on my largest memory purchase for my digital camera, the A-DATA 16GB Turbo SDHC Class 6 Memory Card. With this 16 GB memory card, it is possible for me to take almost 9000 pictures at the best resolution for an eight megapixel Canon digital camera. But my primary purpose of buying this large memory, is so I can record up to several hours of video on my digital camera. For that purpose, this fast memory card serves extremely well for that task. I had no problems using this memory on my digital camera so far. The speed of this memory card is greater than the capability of my camera when it comes to recording as well is playing back the videos. With this large memory, it is possible for me to use my digital camera like a camcorder on a trip providing the battery holds out.
When buying memory for your camera, be sure to do some research making sure you camera can handle the given memory size and type. Me for instance, my camera is capable of handing a SDHC SD card up to 16 GB maximum. Also if you want to use your card reader if you have one, be sure that can handle a card of this size as well. It appears, large memory cards of all varieties are getting cheaper and cheaper. I was able to use my USB card reader with this card connected to my computer to offload the videos. The specifications on my card reader did not indicated it was capable of reading a SDHC one. This apparently also hold true for my 7 inch digital picture frame as well. It apparently worked there as well. Also, with that device there was no indication on the specifications that it would work. If that didn't work, that would have been no problem for me. I could just simply connected my camera to my computer's USB port instead. Using this card reader, I ran a speed tests on this memory. The result was close to 19 MB per second in terms of read speed. Using this memory card this way with my card reader, transform it to a 16 GB portable hard drive or like a jump drive if I wish.
I would like to add that with most devices this 16 GB SDHC card would more than likely work if your device is less than a year or 2 old. This will be true whether the device's specifications indicated so or not. The best options are: 1. If possible to borrow one from a friend to try out on your device. 2. Since they are relatively inexpensive right now, go ahead and purchase one and take the chance of hoping it works alright.
Customer Review: Bought two with black/yellow label - Neither is truly class 6 and one failed after 5 months
Summary: 2 Stars
Very unhappy with this product. I had previously purchased a class 6 A-Data 16GB card which has a different label (That one has the "16GB" notation in a red circle) and that card worked fine.
The two that I purchased which have the black/yellow label were VERY much slower than the one with the red circle. The red circle card lets me shoot video in my Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ5 but the two new ones do not, due to their slow speed.
After 5 months of use, one card failed, and cannot be read by any reader or device I try it in. I had transferred the current batch of files from it, so I didn't lose anything, but that was pure luck, and had the card failed a half hour earlier, I could have lost unique data.
Now I'm trying to figure out A-Data's so-called "lifetime warranty" deal, and feeling like a sucker. Maybe after Chinese New Years is over, they'll return to their office and do the right thing and honor my warranty. Once (IF!?) I get the replacement, I'll simply sell it without opening it, and purchase a reliable card.
To sum up - DO NOT TRUST THIS CARD. This would be an OK gamble if you want a card for any NON CRITICAL use. If you have an MP3 library and need a cheap card to load up for on-the-go listening, or as a thumb-drive to move files around, eh, sure. If you might be taking photos you plan to keep, or making recordings or movies you ever want to see again. . . Ah, think again. Perhaps Kingston or Sandisk would be the best choice for reliability.
Edit: The warranty service I received from AData's California office was both polite and prompt. I had a new card about a week after sending in the defective one. The new card has proper class 6 speed, and bears a blue label with all white lettering except a red "class6" at the bottom.
Customer Review: Fast reads, great capacity, and cheap
Summary: 4 Stars
This is a great card for capacity, price, and read speed, but not a very fast writing card, at least the item I received.
It seems like flash memory is very hit or miss these days. It has amazing read performance, often around 20MB/s. Unfortunately, the write speeds (the most important for digital camera usage) are not up to par. When writing to the card, transfers start somewhat slow, 3-4MB/s, and accelerate up to 6-7MB/s (above the Class 6 spec of 6MB/s) after about 10 seconds of writing to the disk.
In camera (Panasonic LX3), on continuous burst, the camera starts fast, for about 15 shots, but slows down dramatically after that to about one shot per second (the images are ~4MB a piece). As a comparison, I bought a 2GB class 4, SanDisk Ultra II and I get only 15MB/s reads, but 12-13MB/s writes. This card records many more images in burst, so many that I stopped recording before it slowed down, >50 however. My card is fast enough to record 720P motion JPEG video from the camera for at least 2 minutes continuously (I did not test beyond that time).
Finally, further benchmarks reveal that formatting as exFAT with 16 kB allocation unit size provides optimal performance (FAT32 with 16 kB blocks was basically identical, which is good as not many devices suppport exFAT).
Realistically, this card is fast enough for almost any usage, but it is disappointing that a year old SanDisk Ultra II 2GB card (Class 4) is twice as fast in write performance.
Customer Review: Super Slow Write Speed! AND Loss of Data!
Summary: 1 Stars
Cons:
SLOW! 1.65MB/s write speed! Isn't this suppose to be a LOT faster being a CLASS 6 and all?
Images disappeared from the card! With file recover software I got most of them back but WTF!?
Pro:
Cheapest 16GB "Class 6" card I could find.
Lesson Learned:
Don't be so cheap.
When I first got this card about 3 weeks ago I didn't bother to benchmark it, I just popped it in my camera and started taking photos. It seemed to work great. Today I went to take some images off the card and only the few photos that I had taken today were on the card! After trying a bunch of file retrieval programs one finally seemed to work (Photorec). Unfortunately I still wasn't able to retrieve them all though. After that fiasco I decided to format the card and then copy some files to and from it just to see if it appeared to be working properly. Well after timing a 578MB file as taking 6 minutes to write to the card and only about 30 sec to read from the card I decided to try a real benchmark program. 1.65MB/s write speed! Absolutely pathetic! Check out the image I uploaded for the complete results. I'm hoping I can return this for a refund so I can add a few bucks and get a different card. Only problem I think I threw out the packaging, Uh oh. If I can't return it stay tuned for a video review of me breaking the card in half.