Kingston Unveils Their 2GB Ultimate SecureDigital Card

[Ekkie Tepsupornchai]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.kingston.com/press/2005/digitalmedia/08a.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.kingston.com/press/2005/...almedia/08a.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Fountain Valley, CA -- August 9, 2005 - Kingston Technology Company, Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced the further expansion of its Secure Digital (SD) Ultimate Card product line with the release of a new ultra-performing 2-GB capacity card. With super-fast 120X transfer rates, Kingston SD Ultimate cards offer significant performance benefits over current Standard and Elite Pro lines of SD cards. The greater storage capacity of the 2-GB SD Ultimate card meets the rigorous demands of professional digital photographers."</i><br /><br /><img src="http://www.pocketpcthoughts.com/images/web/2003/ekkie_kingstonsd2gbultimate.jpg" /><br /><br />Very nice! Now at a list price of $219, this isn't cheap, especially when compared with the current market price of 1GB SD cards. I would expect this price to come down once it's been on the market for a bit and the other manufacturers start to release competing 2GB offerings. At this point, there is no word yet on when we will see the card in online stores or who will carry it (the "Buy Now" links found <a href="http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/configurator/memtype.asp?type=Secure+Digital">here</a> on their site lead to empty information at the moment).

[Lday]

Not as fast, but a bargain none the less is Newegg A-Data 2GB SD for $129.99. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=20-211-314&amp;CMP=BAC-tbcpc

No rebates, seems to be in stock. Can't justify it for myself, just bought the 2GB Kingston CF for $69.99 (after rebates).

[Craig Horlacher]

I'd like to see speed comparisons of this and other sd cards. I recently got a SanDisk Ultra II 2GB SD card that I use in my e830.

The last time I saw a comparison of flash memory card types was a few years ago and is was for compact flash cards. In their tests (I don't remember who it was) the "high speed" cards for the most part were no faster than other cards. Generic cards were often as fast or faster than name brand "high speed" cards. There were one or two name brand cards that were "high speed" and were much faster than the rest but the overall results basically showed that you can't trust flash memory speed ratings.

Anyone else have any thoughts, insight, or experience? Has anyone actually had problems (video frame drops etc) that were fixed by a faster flash card?

[christak]

I've seen a dramatic improvement using high speed SD cards over standard speed ones. Specifically, I have a SanDisk Ultra II 1GB SD card along with a Lexar 32x 1 GB SD card -- both of them perform extremely well with "write intensive" applications like Netfront or FeederReader... Standard speed Kingston 512MB SD and SanDisk 256MB SD cards were nearly useless with these apps. I saw a real speed improvement of 4 to 5 times (i.e. the high speed cards were able to write the output files 4 to 5 times faster than the standard speed SD cards in my older iPAQ 2210). I've seen similar results with my x50v... 8)

[ricksfiona]

Not as fast, but a bargain none the less is Newegg A-Data 2GB SD for $129.99. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=20-211-314&amp;CMP=BAC-tbcpc

No rebates, seems to be in stock. Can't justify it for myself, just bought the 2GB Kingston CF for $69.99 (after rebates).

Yes, I see no real reason to pay a premium for a fast SD card and using it for a PDA. None at all. Videos and MP3 files seem to play just fine on average speed SD cards.

[Muntasser]

we need those 4gb sd cards to come down in price imo. the market for compact solid state mp3 players would explode :)

[AximMeister]

2GB SD ... GIMME :D Will backup my PC to my phone with it :D

[dunos]

I'd like to see speed comparisons of this and other sd cards.

I can't tell you how this card performs in-device, however I can tell you how some other cards perform:

http://www.durrans.com/cardspeed/

Dan.

[snazzy]

but I thought that these high speed cards only make a difference in digicams, and not pdas as pocketpcs are not able to utilise the extra speed....

[G M Fude]

That's about right, snazzy. Kingston would have had digital photographers in mind when they developed this card. The increasing pixel size of digital cameras places extra demands on the write speed of removable storage media.

[Pony99CA]

I bought a PGI 2 GB 133x SD card at Fry's a week or two ago for $150 (no rebate necessary). I haven't done any benchmarks on it because I bought it mainly for the space, but they claim a 20 Mbps (or is it MBps?) transfer rate. For comparison, the SanDisk Ultra II is only rated at 10.

Steve

[jlp]

Indeed the Sandisk Ultra II is rated at 66x. Tho they have the Extreme III rated at 133x too but not yet available in 2 GB capacity.

Apacer is already on the market, in some places in Europe at least, with a 2GB at 150x. The price is slightly above the PQI one, at least here in Switzerland.