Transcend 8 GB SDHC Class 6 Flash Memory Card TS8GSDHC6E
by TRANSCEND
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List Price: Our Price: $9.99 You Save: $11.00 (52%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Category: CE See more product details |
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Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Transcend 8 GB SDHC Class 6 Flash Memory Card TS8GSDHC6E
Customer Review: Great affordable 8GB SDHC card... and fast too.
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently bought this 8GB SDHC card for my Canon SD1000 camera. The card works very well and I've had no problems with it so far. If you're in the market for an affordable high quality SDHC card, this may be the one for you. Sorry, I kind of sounded like a used car salesman right there, didn't I? I assure you that I don't work for Transcend. But, here's why I think this card is awesome:
Pros:
-Affordable!
-Large 8GB capacity
-Class 6 read/write speed (which is the fastest speed currently available)
-Lifetime warranty (at least that's what the package says :)
-Transcend is a reputable company that's been making memory products for a very long time. ( I swear to the tech Gods that I don't work for them!)
Cons:
- I can't think of any right now. The closest thing to a "Con" that I can think of is that if you buy this card now, it will probably become cheaper in a month or so :) No, make that 2 weeks.
IMPORTANT SPECIAL NOTES ABOUT SDHC MEMORY CARDS:
-SDHC cards are not compatible with most older SD cameras, SD devices, or SD card readers.
-SDHC cards are rated by speed using different "classes". There are currently three data transfer speed classes available for SDHC cards. These classes are "class 2, class 4, and class 6". For example, "Class 2" would have the slowest read/write speed while "Class 6" has the fastest read/write speed. So if you have a device in which speed may play a crucial role, make sure you buy a higher "class" SDHC card. Again, this SDHC card has the fastest read/write speed available right now. Class 6 has a minimum read/write speed of 6mb/sec... while Class 2 has minimum speed rating of 2mb/sec, and Class 4 is 4mb/sec. Starting to see the pattern?
SO WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "SD CARDS" AND "SDHC CARDS?
SDHC is basically an upgrade to the older SD cards. The reason they upgraded it was to achieve greater data transfer speeds AND capacity than previously possible with normal SD cards... and to do this, they had to redesign the card (which is why it's not compatible with normal SD devices). This was necessary because digital cameras and digital video cameras these days have higher resolutions, which equate to larger file sizes and faster data transfer needs.
I hope I haven't confused everybody by going into this much detail, but I can't help being the nerd that I am. If you are confused, don't hesitate to comment on this post and I will try my best to answer your questions. Also, any feedback is always welcome!
Conclusion: Buy the card if you have a new device that uses SDHC. It rocks! (This message has been approved by the "Duke of New Mexico")
Customer Review: Quirky.
Summary: 2 Stars
I bought this SD card for 2 applications:
1) I am a musician who records himself and his students practicing with a "mere" digital pocket camera (both a Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ4K 8.1MP Digital Camera with 10x Wide Angle MEGA Optical Image Stabilized Zoom (Black) and a Canon PowerShot A720IS 8MP Digital Camera with 6x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom, depending on which movie format I need -- this card works great in both) set on "movie" mode. I've reached the point where I've needed more storage time than I had on the high-performance/speed 2GB Kingston and SanDisk cards I was using, and this card has performed remarkably well.
2) I also make audio-only recordings of myself, as well as rehearsals and performances of larger ensembles I play with on my Zoom H2 Handy Portable Stereo Recorder, and this card should provide about 8-hours of recording time at CD quality. I tend to record at higher quality levels (up to 96kHz, 24-bit), so I need more recording space than most. The device (advertised to accept up to 16GB SD cards) takes a while to recognize this card and to format it, but it seems to work pretty well after that.
I was VERY impressed with this card, and the price is almost so low it's scary -- but I believe it's worth it, at least for recording video. As for audio....
The biggest negative is that once it has a bunch of data on it, it takes a VERY long time to format (also, the H2 can't recognize it -- not even to reformat for its own use -- if it's been formatted for the Canon, and I haven't had this problem with other SD cards). I had it about 1/2 full with .avi files, and it took 15 MINUTES (!!!) to format on a Core2 Quad Processor (Q6600) with 4 GB of RAM through the computer's media port slots (connected via an internal USB bus). Most SD cards of 2GB-4GB take only a matter of SECONDS to format this way; this card formatted in seconds also the FIRST time, but subsequent attempts have taken MUCH longer, as described above.
This has me a bit nervous as to what's going on. Is the computer having to fix data errors on the card along the way? What's the holdup? I'm concerned enough that I won't be using this card to record my more important gigs -- it will remain in my case as an emergency backup.
Recommended with hesitation....
Customer Review: As Easy As I Can Explain This!
Summary: 5 Stars
I have always used SD Cards (Secure Digital) for my cameras, so when I purchased the Panasonic HM-TA1 Video Camera, I was surprised to learn I needed an SDHC card (Secure Digital High Capacity) card. What is the difference? SDHC cost a lot more, but they must be doing something special. Here's the gist:
SDHC - Secure Digital High Capacity memory cards are flash memory cards with a minimum capacity of 4GB (gigabytes). SDHC cards are the same size as an ordinary SD Card - about the size of a postage stamp.
Secure Digital Cards have been around for almost a decade and SDHC Cards are a newer version developed for use with digital cameras and other devices that don't just require a higher capacity card, but also one that comes with higher performance. Here is something I found on Wikipedia: "SDHC cards are designed for devices that are compatible with the SD 2.00 specification. Products designed exclusively to support previous SD specifications 1.0 and 1.1 will not be able to utilize SDHC cards".
This is confusing (kind of), but you can use an SDHC card as a SD card, but not always the other way around for good quality.
There is also a new feature out - "Classification of Data Transfer Speed (DTS)".
SD cards can record video up to 40X (6MB/Sec), but it starts slow (like, 0.1 MB/Sec) and then increases to 6MB/Sec (40X speed). It is an average speed recording. However, an SDHC card starts and finished at 6MB/Sec - 40x Speed, but has a top speed of 20MB/Sec - 133x Speed. That means your video is very clear and crisp on that high resolution flat screen!
Of course, the SDHC cards are more expensive than SD cards, but you get a far better quality.
I found that I had anything from a 512 MB SD card to an 8 MB SD card. There just was no point in having all these loose cards. Now with an SDHC, I can record more video at a higher quality and capacity. So it's worth the money in the end. You can get NEW cards at a cheaper price on Amazon, but I would advise against getting a used card. Like the adage goes, "You just don't know where that thing has been!"
Customer Review: My Canon loves the 8 GB SDHC card
Summary: 5 Stars
I recently purchased a Canon Powershot A720IS digital camera that is capable of recognizing and using up to 2 TERRABYTES of memory card (in the future) so I wanted to get the largest memory card I could install for now. I wanted to use the camera both on dry land and with an underwater housing for shooting stills and video on dive trips. Camera specs said an 8 GB SDHC card would record one hour of hi res video at 30 fps. Or nearly 2300 hi res stills at 8 megapixels.
A test of the Transcend 8GB SDHC card in the camera ended up shooting 70 minutes of full screen, 30fps digital video that could not be distinguished from my DV camcorder video quality. Playback from the memory card to the TV was so fast & efficient there was never a single "stutter" on the screen. The card speed is genuinely FAST as advertised. Low level formatting of the card allowed for very acceptable rapid-fire sequential still photo shooting speeds when light levels were bright enough that the flash was not needed/used. Something like 2 photos every 3 seconds. Files were flawless in display, both for stills and video.
This product was significantly lower in price than the Kingston 8GB SDHC card I originally bought with the camera. I've used both interchangeably and cannot see any different in the speed or capacity and quality of imagery is identical. For the money I'll stick with Transcend and am looking forward to getting their 16GB card once the price drops substantially below the $100 mark. That would provide nearly 2 1/2 hours of video on my still camera or 4600 highest quality stills. I'm afraid my camcorder will be collecting dust much of the time. A big advantage to video on the card is there are NO MOVING PARTS, e.g. a mini DV tape cassette and camcorder or VCR playback unit needed to dump the video and stills to my Mac for editing and burning DVDs. I just stick the card in the MicroMate USB card reader, plug it in the computer and bingo, ready to sort thru and dump to the hard drive. Since the card is formatted by a Canon camera it automatically boots up the Canon Viewer software too. That should work the same for other brands of still cameras formatting this chip.
Customer Review: Not 8GB! Actually a 7.44 GB
Summary: 3 Stars
When I first discovered the Transcend 8GB SDHC Card (SD 2.0 SPD Class 6) I was truly delighted. It seemed to be a high quality, high capacity well priced SDHC card with high transfer rate.
I initially bought two of them. When they arrived and I started to use them I discovered two things:
The 8GB Cards don't hold 8GB of data. Even with the "Liberal" and perhaps questionable practice of using a Decimal (Base 10) approach to describe capacity of a Binary (Base 2) two device, this device doesn't even have 8GB by this "Liberal" standard.
Many companies, trying to save money on manufacturing, quote the storage capacity of their products in the decimal system so as to make things seem a bit larger than they actually are. A KB to a computer is 1024 Bytes whereas in non computer nomenclature a Kilo is 1000.
The SanDisk SD Cards register at 7.6 GB (Using Binary Measure even after format and file system overhead was taken into account), whereas these Transcend SD Cards only had 7.44 GB (Using Binary Measure also including file system overhead) which fell short of 8,000,000,000 when converting to Decimal.
It seems that the manufacture got the 8GB number claimed on the label by doing some creative accounting which rounds up to the nearest Gigabyte.
Now for many this might not be a big deal, but if you actually have video that takes an actual 8GB and wanted to play it on a portable device, then sort of 8GB doesn't really work for you.
I can't say to the file, "Well when you round up to the nearest GB then there is enough space for you"
The other thing that I noticed was that the SanDisk 8GB SDHC CARD (SD 2.0 Class 2) handled data transfers just as fast as this Class 6 did. I thought this was supposed to be faster?
Overall an okay SDHC card but BE AWARE THAT IT ISN'T REALLY 8GB!