Why are some SD Cards so CHEAP?

[mcgrawfan]

I am thinking about getting a Canon S3 and have been looking online at SD card prices. Why are some so inexpensive? Do they still do the job well? J&R has a lot of great prices now and some rebates. Wanting to get a memory card that does the job but would prefer not to spend $50 on one.

 

[ukcatfan]

I use off brands as well as some name brands and I have had no problems. I usually buy from Newegg, b/c they are very well respected and have excellent customer service. For $50 right now, you can get a 4GB high speed card. Also, many off brands have warranties just as good as the name brands.

Kevin

 

[jann1033]

some might claim to be faster but not always in line with their price...some have really fast speeds all cameras can't use( ie my rebel)
i did a little totally unscientific test of all my cards once and they all worked about the same, cheap and not so cheap so while i'm sure there could be differences i couldn't tell i've gotten some good bulk ones from microcenter and frys.com has some good deals also ( ie around $10-15 per gb)

 

[DVC Jen]

So can the rebel XTi make use out of the super high speed cards? If not then I am not going to spend more $$ to get them.

 

[ukcatfan]

So can the rebel XTi make use out of the super high speed cards? If not then I am not going to spend more $$ to get them.

Yes, it can take advantage of high speed cards. Yes, name brands do transfer data faster than off brands. Will you notice a difference between a high speed $20 off brand compared to $75 name brand? It is very unlikely.

It is often difficult to find out just how fast of a card your camera can use.

Kevin

 

[YEKCIM]

I just got two Kingston 2GB SD cards in; one was $25 shipped, from Amazon, and the other was $10 after $35 rebate, from buy.com. I subscribe to buy.com's daily email and they are always running specials on memory cards.

~YEKCIM

 

[Dan Murphy]

The hi speed transfer cards (a bit more expensive) are important if you will be using the video function (and it is a pretty good one too) on the S3.

 

[ukcatfan]

The hi speed transfer cards (a bit more expensive) are important if you will be using the video function (and it is a pretty good one too) on the S3.

Let me add to this a little. From experience with the S1 and S2, the off name high speed cards work just fine with video at the max resolution. Look for the card saying something like 50X or higher.

Kevin

 

[Groucho]

The answer to the original question is simple: competition!

Only the top-top-top-of-the-line "big name" cards are faster than the cheap ones. Most cheap "hi speed" cards are a bit faster than the expensive SanDisk Ultra 2 - but the SanDisk Ultra 3 writes faster than almost any others, but for a big cost!

A couple months ago, I did a list of all the SD cards I could find info on and their read/write speeds. Read speeds are what are usually advertised (ie, 60x, 133x, 150x, etc), the write speeds are what vary a lot. But still, a lesser-known 133x-150x will generally be as fast or faster than anything else, excluding the hi-buck Ultra 3 and one or two others (I think there was a Kingston or maybe Lexar, and maybe a Polaroid, which was one of the others rebadged, I think.)

Of course, most cameras aren't nearly fast enough to hit these high speeds so it's often a waste to spend the big bucks.

Myself, I'm too cheap to pay for a SanDisk SD card (I do have a couple SanDisk 2G MS cards since there's not much choice!), I have an Ultra 133x and a PQI 150x and they're fine, though the first PQI was DOA, so I UPSed it back PDQ and everything is AOK with the replacement. YMMV, though.

I keep an eye on the buy.com emails and they often have outrageous deals on SD cards, as do a few others places.

 

[DVC Jen]

So it doesn't make any sense for me to invest in a Lexar 2gig 133x card versus a less expensive card?

 

[Thumper_ehhhhh]

Most of my SD cards are the cheap ones. No problem. I do however have a 150x card and it does seem to load pictures faster. I didnt notice the difference in speed until I got my Pentax K100d. I notice the speed difference in the burst mode.

 

[Groucho]

So it doesn't make any sense for me to invest in a Lexar 2gig 133x card versus a less expensive card?

I wouldn't, but that's just me. I think my 150x PQI card was maybe $25, my Ultra 133x was $20, and I'm pretty sure that I've seen them for $15 since then.

I just tried to find the list I made of different SD cards and their read/write speed but I can't seem to find it - I know it's there but I think it was in a thread with a non-obvious title, and trying to do an advanced search produces no results whatsoever for messages written by me in this board using the words "write speed", which is of course not correct.

The Lexar is one of the fastest (20m read and write, like the Sandisk Ultra 3), but costs about $80. The Ultra (brand name, not Sandisk) 2g 150x card is 20m read, 12m write and costs much less (especially if you get it when there's a rebate.)

I'd rather have multiple 2g cards than one premium that's maybe slightly faster in perfect circumstances. Remember that your camera is probably the weakest link - DPReview estimated the Canon XTi to write at about 4/5m so even the Ultra is 2-3x+ faster than the camera can do. They estimate the Canon S3 at about 3m.

So, expecting your camera that can write as a max speed of 3-5m/sec to perform better than a card than can do 20m writes instead of 12m writes is probably not very realistic.

 

[DVC Jen]

Thanks Groucho. Not sure I am all that crazy about hearing my camera referred to as the "weakest link" especially with my extreme lack of skill as a photographer.

I am joking - it didn't bother me at all.

Just goes to show how valuable this forum is to novice wanna-be photographers like me.

I want to get at least one more card before our June WDW trip. I already have two Lexar 2gig cards.

You can bet I won't be spending that kind of money on the next one.

 

[alan]

One other thing to be aware of - there are a lot of counterfeit cards out there.

When you receive a new card, check the documentation that comes with it to find out how you can verify it is a real card. For example, my recent Kingston card pointed me to a website where I could type in numbers from the label to verify its identity.

This after my SanDisk card turned out to be fake - I only discovered this when I started losing photos or having them reported as corrupt.

The retailer has gone out of business, but don't think you'll be safe just because you buy from a big retailer - I've read of people getting fakes from Circuit City and other "respectable" stores.

It all worked out well for me in the end because American Express refunded my purchase cost. But once bitten, twice shy.

You need to remember that you're putting your photographs onto these things. Why lose your photos of a multi-thousand dollar trip because you didn't want to spend an extra $20 on a good-quality card?

MHO, of course.

regards,
/alan

 

[Golf4food]

I find our Kingston 1GB ($35?) to work just as fast as our SanDisk UltraII 2GB ($90+) for what it is worth... Pentax istDL

I don't care if my pictures download 2 minutes faster to my computer. What am I going to do in that two minutes? Save me the $60 and I'll be happier than saving 2 minutes of download time. <--- See? Happier. Haha.