Dang it, why isn’t there a universal tech language out there?! I mean seriously, as photographers and videographers, we already have to deal with all sorts of random vocabulary to understand our craft, why must there be even more to decipher? Now that my rant is slightly over, let me share the super secret code that may help you understand the write performance of the card you have, and the cards you’ll perhaps end up buying in the future.
First and foremost, we’re going have to understand what “x-speed” is — Companies note the maximum transfer speeds of their cards in x-speed and/or in MegaBytes per second (MB/s) on the packaging and labels of their cards. I’m sure you’ve seen some advertisements that say x650 or x1000 on the labels that are out there, and if you don’t speak that that x-rated language, you’ve probably looked at it and said, “Well, higher is probably better… but how does it compare to the ones next to it that say 35MB/s?” Yes. I’ve definitely said that, and yes, I had no idea either.
BUT- I’m pretty much a math genius and in my computations/research, I’ve found that every ‘x’ stands for 150KB/s or .15MB/s– actually I e-mailed some memory card manufacturers to find out. So, if you find a card that is x1000, multiply 1000 by .15/MB, and you’ll get the speed of 150MB/s to compare along the rest of those lovely cards hanging on the shelf.
So there you go, x=.15MB/s and if you do the light algebra and substitute that number in for ‘x’ on the card, you’ll find the solution to understanding x-speed!
Now keep in mind, having a camera that doesn’t take advantage of higher class cards coupled with high class cards won’t yield any performance boost at all until you upgrade your camera.
Note: New packaging from various companies show both x-speed and MB/s on the product packaging, but still not on the actual card.
A recent trip to Best Buy showed that they only carried SanDisk cards. There was a mixture of new packaging of theirs which are now displaying both x-speeds and speeds in MB/s as well as some older packages that didn’t have x-speeds! A trip next-door to Office Depot that carried a bunch of Lexar cards as well as SanDisk cards proved to show that other brands are now incorporating both x-speeds and MB/s on their new packaging, although there was a mixture of both new and old packaging on the racks. I’m glad to see two of the popular card companies are getting on the same page as old packaging phases out though. On the cards themselves, there’s only a MB/s signifier on the labels though.
Mykii Liu
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It would be nice if they dropped the 1000x and just used MB/s.
It would be better if they listed BOTH the READ and the WRITE speeds.
A 200MB/s read speed sounds like a great selling point, but when the card only WRITES at 16MB/s it’s going to slow down your shooting.
Oh, I totally agree! If I had companies sending me memory cards, I’d test them all and post the results of read and write speeds 😀
Not to mention the counterfeit cards that are out there.
I mainly buy from major retailers (B&H, Adorama, Newegg), so I haven’t run into this, but I’d never buy used or on eBay.
Amen to that, those eBay cards are horrid! Those overseas relatives of mine are pretty dang good at making crap stuff and passing it off as legit :/
The 150kb/s is taken from the original read speed of the very first CD-ROM drives back in the early 90’s which could only read v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y
As the CD-ROM drives speeded up they got 5x, 10x and 20x speed classifications. SD and CF cards simply take this idea further forward.
I agree they should just publish the read/write speed….
I’m glad that someone else knows this– I kind of figure that so many new comers don’t even know what the read speed would be on a CD, which can be more confusing when you compare it to the read speed of a DVD, for which 1x is nine times faster than 1x on a CD.
I guess being a bit older does (still) contribute to information technology! I remember buying my first CD Rom drive (I don’t remember how much it was, you could probably buy an iPad for the price these days!) and installing Corel Draw from CD on my 486… Corel those days came on something like 20 3+1/2″ diskettes so the speed saving was immense.
Haha! I only remember the fun times installing Microsoft Windows 3.1 Workstation though those floppy disks! Having that knowledge does help for sure though! My first CD-RW burner that was 4x speed was $420 bucks or so. It was so awesome!
It’s all too confusing. Research before purchasing is key. Your Best Buy and Office Depot are right up the street from me ?