SD Card Speed in Note Pro and camera

bill-e

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Jul 8, 2011
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I've recently purchased a new SD card for my camera, a Nikon D600, so that I can easily transfer photo's to my Samsung Galaxy Note Pro 12.2 tablet. In fact I purchased a Sandisk Extreme Pro MICRO SD card so I can just pop it out of my camera and into the tablet.

Below are some tests I ran with various speed cards both in my camera and in my Tablet as well as to/from my PC with a USB 3 card reader. In ALL cases the faster cards tested faster.

The most important test in my opinion was the slot to slot in camera test where I transferred 50 files totaling 1.29gb from one card to another in an attempt to see if the camera hardware could take advantage of the speed of the faster cards. In a word YES, it is significantly faster with the faster cards as seen here.

In camera performance. Nikon D600, 50 raw files, 1.29gb, copy slot 1 to slot 2.
Slot 1 Sandisk Extreme Plus Micro SD
Slot 2, Transend Class 10 - 2:40
Slot 2, Sandisk Extreme Pro - 1:37

In camera performance. Nikon D600, 50 raw files, 1.29gb, copy slot 1 to slot 2. Changed to two Class 10 full size SD cards
Slot 1, Transend Class 10
Slot 2 EyeFi Class 10 - 3:10

So the difference between fast UHS-1 cards and what the manufacturers are selling as fast Class 10 cards is very significant, 1:37 vs 3:10!

This test in my opinion confirms that the faster card is better, at least in cameras which support the UHS standard. This is a big difference in write speed which will be apparent when your buffer writes to disk.

The rest of these test benchmark performance both in and out of my Note Pro Tablet.

This batch of tests is from almost a year ago when I first got my tablet.

I tried benchmarks on both the Note and a PC as well as copying a 1 gig file over USB3 to both a card reader and the Note. As you can see it's slow and a cheap class 6 or 10 card should be more than enough if you talking just speed inside the Note Pro.

*Sandisk 64g class 10 UHS-1 rated at 80mbs - card connected via USB3 to PC, - 93mbs read, 61mbs write 500k sequential
*Sandisk 64g class 10 UHS-1 rated at 80mbs - 19.2 read and 15.2 write using AT SD default tested in the Tablet
*Sandisk class 6 16g card in Note Pro. 17.4 read and 10.97 write using AT SD default tested in the Tablet
*Transend class 10 16g card in card reader connected to Note Pro. 18.14 read and 15.28 write using AT SD default tested in the Tablet
*Sandisk 64g class 10 UHS-1 rated at 80mbs - copy 1g file USB3 to card reader - 28 seconds
*Sandisk 64g class 10 UHS-1 rated at 80mbs - copy 1g file to tablet (usb3 connection) - 1:28

More benchmarks: I bought the 32g Sandisk Extreme Pro micro SD and a 16g EyeFi Class 10 card and just did the following benchmarks this morning,

*Sandisk 32g Extreme Pro class 10 UHS-1 rated at 94mbs - card connected via USB3 to PC, - 93.14mbs read, 84.67mbs write 500k sequential
*Sandisk 32g Extreme Pro class 10 UHS-1 rated at 94mbs - 21.57 read and 19.78 write using AT SD default tested in the Tablet
*Eyefi Class 6 8g card in card reader connected via USB3 to PC, - 17.22mbs read, 13.47mbs write 500k
*EyeFi Class 10 16g card in card reader connected via USB3 to PC, - 20.03mbs read, 19.57mbs write 500k
*Transend Class 10 16g card in card reader connected via USB3 to PC, - 20.83mbs read, 17.22mbs write 500k

**And, just tried, the fastest way to get pictures on your tablet is with a USB3 OTG cable and a USB card reader. I clocked the new Sandisk Extreme Pro at 33mbs read and write.

In summary, in every case faster cards tested faster but they only reached their advertised speeds when performing transfers via USB 3 to a PC and in those tests the difference between the fastest UHS cards and the Class 10 cards was very significant. The same relationship held true with the in camera test with the UHS cards testing significantly faster.

Hope this info is useful to some of you. My recommendation is to buy the faster cards.
 

muzzy996

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Feb 3, 2011
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Yup, my experience as well. Sequential read and write speeds on the higher rated cards makes a noticeable difference.