SanDisk – Flash memory card – 8 GB – Class 2 – microSDHC with MobileMate Micro Reader

3 Comments

1. Nuren says:

   December 27, 2009 at 5:38 am

   Compatibility
   —————
   I bought this along with a Sandisk MicroSD-to-MiniSD Adapter (Bulk Static Package) for use with my Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. It was detected fine after insertion, not requiring any further installation or OS updates to detect and use all 7.44GB (see below). Make sure your device specifically supports SDHC (different from regular SD) type memory cards before you buy or else you might be limited to using only 2GB or 4GB of space (if it works at all). Also, this card should function perfectly in any devices that accept full-size SDHC cards, simply insert the MicroSDHC card into a MicroSD-to-MiniSD adapter, and insert that into a MiniSD-to-SD adapter.

   Speed
   —————
   This is a Class 4 card meaning that it gets real-world performance of about 4MB (1 MB = 2^20 bytes) sustained write speed, which is about what I’ve experienced with it. It feels quite acceptably fast for most applications. For example, playing back WVGA resolution 1.5mbps H.264/AVC video plays back smoothly at full 24 fps. This card can hold approximately 8-9 feature-length movies at these settings.

   In the Box
   —————
   This package includes the 8GB MicroSDHC card and an extremely small USB 2.0 MicroSDHC reader which can, for example, be plugged directly into a Mac/Windows system to function as a sizable USB thumb drive. There are no moving parts on the reader. An optional mini-lanyard is also included for use with the reader. This does not come with a MiniSD adapter, a full SD adapter, cables, or any other accessories. The MicroSDHC card is *very* small, in case you haven’t seen them in real life, they are much smaller than they appear in the pictures. In my case, it’s actually smaller than my thumbnail. Be advised that if you don’t have a safe storage place for it, it will, no doubt, get lost very quickly.

   Capacity
   —————
   Be aware that even though this is advertised as 8GB, it is notated as 1GB = 1,000,000,000 bytes or 10^9 bytes (decimal definition) while most all computer systems will interpret it as the binary definition: 1GB = 1,073,741,824 bytes or 2^30 bytes. This means that the actual usable capacity is actually approximately 8*0.93 = 7.44GB (i.e. about 7.44GB of actual space, not the full 8GB). This isn’t a con, just saying don’t be surprised when you get it installed and it’s not the full 8GB.

   File systems
   —————
   This card comes pre-formatted with FAT32 which is compatible with most operating systems and mobile devices. You can, of course, format it yourself to whatever other file system you want such as NTFS, HFS+, ext3, and so forth. If you don’t know which file system you need, chances are you won’t have to change it at all as FAT32 is compatible with numerous devices and operating systems. Check your device’s documentation for file system compatibility information specific to your device. Be aware that if you format this using the FAT16 file system (might be required for some legacy hardware) you will only be able to use 4GB of the card’s total capacity (minus the additional decimal-to-binary conversion loss as explained above).

   Pricing
   —————
   I bought this for around 140 USD just a week ago, and in that short amount of time the price has already dropped to only about 90 USD, this is certainly a great deal, and I would definitely expect it to fall more as time goes on, especially once the expected 12GB and 16GB capacity cards are available.

   Authenticity
   —————
   Just as you would expect from Amazon.com (and partners), this is, without a doubt, a genuine SanDisk memory card. I have specifically verified the security hologram on the packaging to have the following authentication features: 1) Large sparkling ‘star’ sign in the top right hand corner of the rectangular block with embedded SanDisk logo. 2) Unique, ten-digit SanDisk Serial Number along the bottom. 3) Embedded logo block has a unique amount of virtual dots on the left, right, top and bottom when viewed at the appropriate angles. 4) Dots are white on black (new feature introduced in 2007). 5) Secondary SanDisk logo visible *underneath* the first holographic logo.

   The Future
   —————
   According to Engadget, SanDisk has announced at CES 2008 a 16GB MicroSDHC card which will be available in June 2008, so if you want more capacity than this 8GB version, I’d recommend waiting to get the future 16GB version which is said to be compatible with all current compliant MicroSDHC devices (including the N810). The SDHC specification allows for cards all the way up to 2048GB (that’s two terabytes!), so expect bigger and cheaper cards to be released regularly.
2. Kynan says:

   December 27, 2009 at 8:17 am

   The card worked perfectly with my Australian Nokia N95, flashed with the latest Nokia firmware at the time (something to the effect of 20.0.0.15). Did not have to do anything special, just plugged it in, checked the memory and sure enough, there it was at the correct size.

   The included USB adapter is really handy, allowing the card to be plugged straight into a USB port without the need for MicroSD to SD adapter followed by an SD to USB or card reader. So it is also useful as a USB key.
3. Xenon says:

   December 27, 2009 at 8:39 am

   The key to this review is:

   “I then formatted the memory card just as I do to all new memory cards, and the memory went down to 3.6 GBs.”

   The poster must have reformatted the card to FAT16 from the factory format of FAT32. FAT16 only supports a maximum of 4GB, which is why the card seems to have lost half of its capacity. If the reviewer had left the formatting alone, or reformatted as FAT32, he/she would still have the approximately 8GB of capacity.