ADATA 16 GB Micro SDHC Card Class 6 with SD Adaptor AUSDH16GCL6-RA1

I bought the A-Data 16GB Class 6 MicroSDHC card as an upgrade for my Sandisk 8GB Class 4 MicroSDHC card. I wanted to stick with Sandisk but noticed that most Sandisk 16GB MicroSDHC cards available at the time of this writing have a Class 2 rating. I went with A-Data since theirs have a Class 6 speed rating.

I tested transfer speeds using a Sandisk MobileMate MicroSDHC USB reader plugged into a Windows 7 PC transferring a single 992MB file. Results are shown below:

Sandisk Class 4 8GB MicroSDHC card:

Write: ~75 seconds (13.2MB/sec)

Read: ~50 seconds (19.8MB/sec)

A-Data Class 6 16GB MicroSDHC card:

Write: ~126 seconds (7.8MB/sec)

Read: ~64 seconds (15.5MB/sec)

The Sandisk Class 4 8GB MicroSDHC card is significantly faster and clearly surpasses it's minimum speed requirement for a Class 4 rating. I'm curious to see how fast the Sandisk 16GB Class 2 and Class 4 MicroSDHC cards perform and if the slower data transfer speed observed on the A-Data 16GB MicroSDHC card is common across all manufacturers with their 16GB MicroSDHC cards.

Although the review posted by the person who timed transfer speed of this card against the Class 4 Sandisk card looks damning, it is important to remember that single-file transfer speed is not always the most important criterion when considering a card like this one. Potentially more important, particularly on a larger card like this, is random seek and latency figures. On larger cards, it can take significantly longer to locate the file that's being looked for, since there simply is more to be searched. A higher-rated card should have a random seek time small enough to not interfere with the card's ability to achieve the rated speed. Without seek and latency data, such comparisons are almost useless.

I am using this card on my rooted T-Mobile MyTouch, and am very happy with the performance. Since one of the things I'm using it for is to offload apps from internal memory onto the sd card and run them from there, there are a lot of small reads taking place all the time, making seek time critical in my case. I don't have any figures on seek or latency time, but I can say the performance has been very satisfactory.

Buy ADATA 16 GB Micro SDHC Card Class 6 with SD Adaptor AUSDH16GCL6-RA1 Now

So far so good. I am using this for the T-Mobile G-1. I have put video podcast from Itunes, an assortment of movies in it's entirety, about 8gb of music, pictures, you name it. It might be a 2-3 second lag wile starting up what you want to watch as far as video, but after that I had no problems. Grant it I am not that computer savvy, but this is a good card, at least for right now until other cards of your likeing come down off of their prices. So G-1 users I don't speak for all of the G-1 users, but this card works very well with the G-1. In October I heard that the new G-1 is coming out so this card will be a welcomed addition or until a 32gb comes out. Give it a try.

Read Best Reviews of ADATA 16 GB Micro SDHC Card Class 6 with SD Adaptor AUSDH16GCL6-RA1 Here

A-Data is one of the major flash RAM manufacturers from Taiwan. Their claim to fame was their excellent performance to cost ratio. They seemed to have continued this tradition.

I needed a larger SDHC card for my Panasonic LX3, which also shoots HD video and raw photos, demanding high transfer rate and large storage capacity. When I found this package for a bargain price I took the bite, as it is also a micro SDHC format for uses with smart phones and PDA devices, among an increasing list of other miniaturized electronics that are adopting to this now universal standard (olympus and sony just abandoned their xD and memory stick on their latest crop of products/cameras). There is no premium for this versatility as other standard sized SDHC cards sold for about the same price if not more at the time of my purchase.

Frustration free package (see uploaded photos) is just a brown envelope with the manufacturer packaged hard case inside holding the adapter and the card itself. I believe the packaging is sufficiently protective. Amazon actually put this brown envelop into another small shipping box. It is probably not necessary, but I appreciate Amazon's taking extra precautions.

The microSDHC card looks well made, fresh off the press with no scratch or smudges, and printed digits. It fits very snugly into the SD sized adapter, that you have to push a little harder to get it in. There's no wiggle or shakes after it sits into the slot. Nothing feels flimsy about this package, which probably should be the par but often isn't.

Transfer rate also performed as expected. I have a sustained rate of over 6MB/sec during download transfers. There has been no problems using it with the LX3 by downloading straight from the camera's USB port, or using a SDHC card reader. I have experienced no problems (yet) and the card had been reliable, while providing the responsiveness (cycle time between RAW capture is negligent compared to a slower class 4 or even a class 2 card) and transfer speed (for large HD video files) that I seek.

There's not much one needs to do for a flash ram other than its reliability, functionality, and durability/build quality. This card apparently delivered on these fronts, while providing the dual-format versatility, at a price I can feel happy about. It's a little better than I expected, actually.

Addendum: Benchmark results for the card I received, obtained by using FDBENCH software using built in card reader on a Thinkpad X61s:

***** FDBENCH Ver 1.02 (C)2003-2007 ep82kazu *****

Drive D:\

Drive Size 100MB

Disk Read Write RRead RWrite (KByte/s)

10252 13615 10128 13233 4031

Copy 2k 32k 256k 1MB (Operations/min)

4054 7260 6288 2040 630

Copy 2k 32k 256k 1MB (Kbyte/Sec)

3923 161 2243 5861 7426

The read/write speed for contiguous files as demonstrated are well above class 6 speeds (6000KB/s). RRead/RWrite are random read write speeds. Apparently more fragmented the file the slower the transfer rate, which is also normal. For your reference only, as there are probably room for error depending on testing hardware and production batches.

Want ADATA 16 GB Micro SDHC Card Class 6 with SD Adaptor AUSDH16GCL6-RA1 Discount?

I bought this card because A-Data is known to provide the best bang for the buck (in other words, great performance with an economic pricing). There were overall good reviews on Newegg about the card. Beware though, the card that Amazon ships you is not the A-Data 8GB TURBO microsdhc Class 6, but rather the regular A-Data 8GB microsdhc Class 6. Thus, Read/Write speeds are slightly slower than the Turbo version. This is also the case if you select Amazon Frustration Free packaging. Free space is actually a little less than 8GB (7.7GB) when popped into my Nokia E63 phone, but otherwise, it works fine with the smartphone. It comes pre-formatted to FAT-32 system.

Some stats for the card (Taken from the packaging):

Approx number of photos

6MP camera 3812

8MP camera 2318

10MP camera 1618

12MP camera 1354

Approx minutes of video

6Mbps HD 135

9Mbps HD 90

13Mbps HD 63

Overall, it's a great buy, but if you're looking for the A-Data 8GB TURBO microsdhc Class 6, you will have to look elsewhere. Check the serial number. If it reads AUSDH8GCL6-RA1, then it is not the TURBO version.

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