Hi there, I just got a new MicroSDHC Mobile Ultra 16GB card (red and grey version) and I was expecting it to perform really well. I already had two other Sandisk MicroSDHC 16GB Class 2 cards and I ran some write and read tests using a Mobile Mate card reader. I was quite surprised to find out that the first 16GB I got is by far the fastest and the new card is barely faster than the second Class 2 card I bought.
I did the tests several times and with a couple computers, copying to the card (write speed) and then copying from the card to my HD (read speed) a single large .avi file of 673MB, measuring the time needed for the transfer.
Here are the results:
MicroSDHC 16GB Class 2, serial number 0826302875DC1, bought the 7th of December of 2008.
Write speed: 12,8MB/s Read speed: 18,4MB/s
MicroSDHC 16GB Class 2, serial number 1008203512D8D, bought the 18th of December of 2010.
Write speed: 7,1MB/s Read speed: 18,6MB/s
MicroSDHC Mobile Ultra 16GB , serial number 114108651D, bought the 30th of November of 2011.
Write speed: 7,6MB/s Read speed: 18,5MB/s
The reader: Mobile Mate Micro, serial AE0806XXJ
All the figures above match and even exceed the class rating of each card. The Mobile Ultra card is advertised to reach up to 30MB/s read speeds, but that might just be caused by the reader reaching its maximum speed.
With all said I can’t really complain, but I’m a bit disappointed and upset about the fact that the newer card is so much slower at writing than the first one I got 3 years ago; I was expecting technollogy to get faster instead of slower, specially when that’s one of the main advertising points.
The same happened to me when the 8GB Sandisk MicroSDHC cards came out. I bought one shortly after their release that performed great and a couple years later I bought another one with same specifications that could only write at half the speed.
Any ideas on what could be the reason for this or am I just missing something?
Thanks for reading!