USB 3.0 card reader

[Brian Stirling]

I'm looking for a compact USB 3.0 card reader that handles SDXC cards at SDXC speeds not just SDHC speeds. My new laptop, a Samsung Series 7 17.3 inch, has a built in SD card slot and is listed as SDXC but when using my Sandisk 64GB Exterme Pro SDXC card the transfer rate is less than 20MB/sec even though the card is rated at 95MB/sec. So, I suspect the laptops card slot is a legacy SDHC reader that's handling the SDXC at the slower SDHC speeds.

The thing is, with my Nikon D800E camera I can easily record over 30GB/day and transfering that much data at <20MB/sec is painful. So, what I'm looking for is a smallish card reader with USB 3.0 interface and true SDXC high speed read/write performance. Any pointers?


Brian

 

[Cerb]

I'm looking for a compact USB 3.0 card reader that handles SDXC cards at SDXC speeds not just SDHC speeds. My new laptop, a Samsung Series 7 17.3 inch, has a built in SD card slot and is listed as SDXC but when using my Sandisk 64GB Exterme Pro SDXC card the transfer rate is less than 20MB/sec even though the card is rated at 95MB/sec. So, I suspect the laptops card slot is a legacy SDHC reader that's handling the SDXC at the slower SDHC speeds.

Due to the pin/trace savings leading to overall cost savings, and USB 2.0 reader chips being common (and thus cheap themselves), basically all integrated card readers are USB 2.0. If it were a legacy SDHC reader, it would not be able to read and write large SDXC cards.

Based on what's out there, I would get the Kingston, as my first choice. It is one of only a few affordable ones out there that officially support SDXC UHS, and gets generally good reviews.

 

[Brian Stirling]

Thanks,


Brian