Panasonic Boosts SD Card Speed

[Jason Dunn]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,117954,tk,dn092804X,00.asp' target='_blank'>http://www.pcworld.com/news/article...n092804X,00.asp</a><br /><br /></div><i>"Matsu****a Electric Industrial, better known by its Panasonic brand name, will begin selling a new series of SD (Secure Digital) memory cards internationally at the end of October. The cards will offer double the data transfer speed of its current fastest cards, the company says. The cards, which have capacities of 512MB and 1GB, are the first two members of its new Pro High Speed Series and are able to transfer data at a maximum rate of 20 MB per second. The previous-fastest SD memory cards made by Panasonic, the Super High Speed Series, transfer data at speeds up to 10 MBps, according to Karl Takahashi, a Panasonic spokesperson."</i><br /><br />More speed? Delicious - especially as the card capacities increase and it takes longer and longer to fill them up with content.

[Shuushin]

SPEED.

Never thought I needed it until I started "reading" audio books.

Always thought the damnable Audible reader took forever to load an 80mb book... but I'm thinking it's prolly the plain vanilla Sandisk 128mb card.

Hoping, anyway.

Prices?

[OSUKid7]

Good news, but do Pocket PCs benefit from the increased speed at all?

[Mark Johnson]

Does anyone have a link to a chart comparing these SD, CF (flash), CF (microdrive) and standard IDE hard drive speeds? I'm curious.

[Jonathon Watkins]

Good news, but do Pocket PCs benefit from the increased speed at all?

Yes, but there is obviously an upper limit to do with the internal transfer capability. I'm not sure exactly where it is at the moment.

Still bigger, faster, better. Cant' beat it. :mrgreen:

[nuka_t]

any card over 3mb/s is a waste.

[Jonathon Watkins]

any card over 3mb/s is a waste.

Hmmm, where are you getting those figures from Nuka_t? Sounds too low to me. Don't forget the speed of transferring data onto the SD card via USB2 or firewire readers. The faster, the better.

[maximus]

any card over 3mb/s is a waste.

Well, in the world of digital camera, speed is everything.

Imagine taking a singleshot raw image with an average size of 8 megabytes each. On a high end digital SLRs (such as Canon 1D, Sigma SD10, etc.), this is a simple comparison of write duration :

- Sandisk Ultra II CF card (6.5 MB/s)will take at least 3.1 seconds.
- 40x Lexar Pro will take at least 2.1 seconds.
- On these newer Panasonic 20 MB/s, it will only take less than a second.

Now, things are significantly more interesting when you are talking about continuous drive mode, where a camera can take up to 8.33 frames per second, to a maximum of 20 frames in 8megapixels mode, which is comparable to 180 megabytes data taken until buffer is full, would you rather spend 60 seconds (on sandisk ultra II) or 20 seconds (on panasonic 20MB/s) to flush the 20 raw images out of your internal camera's memory ?

[nuka_t]

any card over 3mb/s is a waste.

Hmmm, where are you getting those figures from Nuka_t? Sounds too low to me. Don't forget the speed of transferring data onto the SD card via USB2 or firewire readers. The faster, the better.

thats the max speed you can get on an axim. on a digicam or usb reader, more speed is useful. but this isnt "digital camera thoughts".

[beq]

Good news, but do Pocket PCs benefit from the increased speed at all?
I'm honestly wondering the same thing? I also saw the announcements from DPReview about these new twice-faster 20MB/sec cards from Panasonic Pro High Speed (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092801panasonic_prohighspeed.asp) and SanDisk Extreme III (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092806sandisk_extremeIII.asp) coming in October, but the press releases seemed to mention that the cards would just work at the previous speeds (&lt;=10MB/sec) in existing high-speed devices? What does that mean? Do new devices need a slot interface with wider bus or something (like say 8-bit)?

Besides Pocket PCs, I'd also like to pose this question in regards to pocket digicams. For example I was about to buy the Kyocera Finecam SL400R that requires at least 10MB/sec SD card to do its 4MP 4fps continuous shot mode. But would a 20MB/sec SD card just be wasted in terms of the actual utilized transfer rate required by this camera?

I was also about to buy that Kingmax 10MB/sec 1GB SD card from NewEgg (currently $89), but maybe I should wait? The announced SanDisk Extreme III 20MB/sec 1GB SD card has an MSRP of $140 so the street price might actually be close to the 10MB/sec cards?


P.S. Incidentally for the digicam I also can't decide between the Kyocera SL400R (http://www.kyoceraimaging.com/product.asp?itemnum=300356) or the newly announced Contax U4R (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092808contax_u4r.asp) (and Contax i4R (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092809contax_i4r.asp)), also to be available in October supposedly...

[Prevost]

Panasonic perhaps are the MOST EXPENSIVE SD CARDS. So, this extra speed for sure will be for a very "affluent" market.

Even for "normal" speeds, there is no way to me to go for a Panasonic instead for a Lexar, to say a brand, simply because of the price difference.

[beq]

^ The SanDisk Extreme III press release quoted an MSRP of $140 for their 1GB SD card with the same 20MB/sec speed as the announced Panasonic Pro High Speed card... Though I realize SanDisk has had some bad rep here (I had problems with my old SD also). But anyways the Extreme III is also stated to offer lifetime warranty, hopefully it's as good (reliable/fast) as the Panasonic, and hopefully the 1GB can be had starting next month for a street price of... say $100-120?

The Kingmax 1GB 10MB/sec SD card from NewEgg for $89 (was $120+ when originally mentioned) is what a recent PPCT news article said is the cheapest card of this speed, so ~$120 to get a 20MB/sec card might be worth it?

Hehe, this is all wishing on my part...

[nuka_t]

Good news, but do Pocket PCs benefit from the increased speed at all?
I'm honestly wondering the same thing? I also saw the announcements from DPReview about these new twice-faster 20MB/sec cards from Panasonic Pro High Speed (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092801panasonic_prohighspeed.asp) and SanDisk Extreme III (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092806sandisk_extremeIII.asp) coming in October, but the press releases seemed to mention that the cards would just work at the previous speeds (&lt;=10MB/sec) in existing high-speed devices? What does that mean? Do new devices need a slot interface with wider bus or something (like say 8-bit)?

Besides Pocket PCs, I'd also like to pose this question in regards to pocket digicams. For example I was about to buy the Kyocera Finecam SL400R that requires at least 10MB/sec SD card to do its 4MP 4fps continuous shot mode. But would a 20MB/sec SD card just be wasted in terms of the actual utilized transfer rate required by this camera?

I was also about to buy that Kingmax 10MB/sec 1GB SD card from NewEgg (currently $89), but maybe I should wait? The announced SanDisk Extreme III 20MB/sec 1GB SD card has an MSRP of $140 so the street price might actually be close to the 10MB/sec cards?


P.S. Incidentally for the digicam I also can't decide between the Kyocera SL400R (http://www.kyoceraimaging.com/product.asp?itemnum=300356) or the newly announced Contax U4R (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092808contax_u4r.asp) (and Contax i4R (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0409/04092809contax_i4r.asp)), also to be available in October supposedly...

unless youre looking for a size not quality camera, for that price(less actually) i would recommend the fuji s7000. i had one for a week(returned it to pay for my axim) and it had awesome pictures, was easy to use and would recommend it. not as small as those ones, but it had a 6.2 mp and 10x optical. on the other extreme, i have a pentax optio s. its the smallest camera with >3.2mp and 3x zoom in hte world. pictures obviously pale in comparison to the s7000, but i would still recommend the new 4mb version.

[maximus]

or alternatively, Konica Minolta X50, (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Konica_Minolta/konicaminolta_dimagex50.asp) a compact 5 megapixel camera.

[Jonathon Watkins]

any card over 3mb/s is a waste.

Hmmm, where are you getting those figures from Nuka_t? Sounds too low to me. Don't forget the speed of transferring data onto the SD card via USB2 or firewire readers. The faster, the better.

thats the max speed you can get on an axim. on a digicam or usb reader, more speed is useful. but this isnt "digital camera thoughts".

True, Digital Media Thoughts (http://www.digitalmediathoughts.com) is the place for detailed discussions about cameras. However, we are on topic as many folks here (including me) swap media between cameras and our PPCs.

However, you did not put any disclaimer on your statement that were just referring to PPCs, so Maximus's thoughts were a reasonable response to your post.

I still would like to know where you get the figure of 3mb/s from. Why do you believe that is the maximum transfer speed inside an Axim?