Is sandisk really that bad?

[CombatChuk]

I need to get an SD card for my tungsten t3 (for mp3s) where I work at (Office Depot) we have a Sandisk for sale (59 dollars after rebate). I found an toshiba (same size) for $64 after shipping. Is the toshiba card that much better?

 

[NokiaDude]

No. Where'd you hear that?!?

 

[LuDaCriS66]

The only thing I've heard about Sandisks are that they weren't compatible with the Canon SD100... which I have. So I've kept away from them

 

[CombatChuk]

I've read over at brighthand and people talk about sandisk like they're the plague

 

[Hyperfocal]

They are SLOW, SLOW, SLOW.

That doen't make them bad for things like Palms and MP-3 players, though. I have a 256mb Sandisk SD card in my MP3 player and it works fine.

Avoid them like the plague in digital cameras, especially high end cameras. My Nikon D2h saves a raw file in 1.5 seconds with a Lexar 12x card and 3 seconds with a Sandisk card. It is even worse in cameras with smaller buffers like a Nikon 995 where you can't shoot again until the buffer has cleared.

 

[RanDum72]

It depends on what kind of Sandisk card you use. The blue ones are the slowest and the cheapest. Go with an Ultra II (black color, SD or CF) and it will smoke anything out there, including Lexar.

 

[AndyHui]

Slow slow slow.

The fastest SD cards are Panasonic. I saw some benchmarks over at Brighthand that showed the Panasonic cards some 4 times faster than SanDisk (ScamDisk?) in all areas: access, reading, writing and formatting.

 

[CombatChuk]

I'm thinking about buying a fujifilm card over in fs/ft. Is that a rebranded sandisk?

 

[Hyperfocal]

Apparently they are rebranded Sandisk. (From a thread on another board)

Here is a chart of some unscientific speed tests. SD card speed tests

From this test, Panasonic makes the fastest SD cards, but speeds are dependent on the device. Only one result is from a T3, but it is the fastest in the test.

Even though Sandisk cards are slow, playing MP3s will not stress the card's speed. Even the slowest cards will work well for streaming MP3 audio. Also, unless you have a USB 2.0 or Firewire card reader, you won't notice much difference writing to the card from your computer.