Photography News | Issue 43 | absolutephoto.com
46 First tests
Accessories First tests We get our hands on the latest kit and share our first impressions – so you know whether or not to add it to your wish list
Reviews by Will Cheung and Kingsley Singleton
PNY SDXC Elite Performance 64GB card £25 is 81MB/s. So read speed shows good figures that relate well to the theory tests, but the card’s write speed in this instance could be far better.
Specs
With the latest cameras boastingveryfastcontinuousshooting rates and the ability to shoot 4K video, the need for a high performance, large capacity card is ever greater. This is why leading memory brands like PNY are constantly striving for better and better performance. The winner of this year’s Best Memory Card in the PN Awards was PNY’s SDXC Elite Performance card, available in sizes from 16GB right up to 256GB. Not only do you get write speeds of up to 90MB/s, but the cards are also robust and are freeze, shock and waterproof. Using the Blackmagic Speed Test app, write speed was tested to be 72.6MB/s, which is a little bit below the manufacturer’s claimed speed, while read speed was found to be 88.3MB/s, a little under the claimed 100MB/s but still more than decent. In a practical test, with the PNY back in the back of a Mac Mini, a 3GB folder took 120secs to write to card which equates to 25MB/s and doing the reverse journey took 37secs which
Prices 64GB £25. 16GB, 32GB, 128GB and 256GB also available Features Water, shock and freeze proof Operating temperature 0°C to 60°C Speed class and rating Class 10, U3, UHS-1 Read speed 100MB/s Write speed 90MB/s Number of insertions 10,000 Dimensions 32x24x.2mm Weight 2g Contact pny.eu
It is great to know that the storage card can deliver a high level of performance if the need comes up
I next put it into a Fujifilm X-T2 and tried shooting stills and 4K video with it. At 8fps shooting compressed Raws with the mechanical shutter I got about 24 frames at that rate and that slowed down to 5fps and soon after to 3fps and was still going at that speed when I stopped after 30secs when I had taken only 100 Raws. The camera’s write light went out after eight seconds. Write speed in this test seemed better thanwith theMacMini. From a reality perspective very few of us would need to machine-gun away in this manner but it is great to know that the storage card can deliver a high level of performance if the need comes up. Shooting bursts of several frames at a time with a second or so respite in between at the maximum shooting speed is probably what photographers do and the card kept up with us for much longer so a solid performance. WC
Verdict
Ask a photographer what they look for in a memory card and you will probably be told reliability, capacity, performance and value for money. Certainly you get that with the PNY SDXC Elite Performance 64GB card tested here.
Right The PNY SDXC Elite Performance 64GB card has a claimed read and write speed of 100MB/s and 90MB/s respectively.
Pros Fast read speed, reliable, high performance for the price Cons Write speed could be faster
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