Latest memory cards offer the highest capacities allowed by the SDHC standard, and compete on speed. What's next?
With Lexar and Sandisk's announcements, over the last two weeks, of new 32GB SDHC memory cards, Secure Digital High Capacity cards have reached their high limit of their memory capacity, right on schedule. Standard SD cards, which could hold up to 4GB of memory, were insufficient for users of high-resolution digital cameras and storage of HD video, and so the SDHC standard was developed by the SD Card Association.
The SanDisk Extreme 32GB SDHC card, which was announced at the end of June, boasts 30MB per second transfer rate for both read and write speeds, which will benefit users of high-resolution DSLRs that have high transfer capabilities. When shooting high-resolution RAW files, slower memory transfer rate cards could slow down or cause the camera to pause while writing to memory is completed. With 30MB/s transfer, such pauses may become a thing of the past.
Until a higher-capacity standard arrives, the main compeition in memory cards will be in the area of speed. Lexar's 32GB card, announced last week, claims a 60 transfer speed with a claimed minimum sustained write speed of 9MP per second. Panasonic, Kingston, Delkin, and Transcend have also brought 32 GB cards to market in recent months at prices ranging from $87 to nearly $300 per card, depending on speed and brand.
But what happens when both speed and capacity have hit their maximum? Get ready for SDXC (Secure Digital eXtended Capaicty), a new spec that was announced in January 2009, at the Consumer Electronics Show. SDXC will allow for up to 2TB (terabytes) capacity cards. The first SDXC card was introduced by Pretec in March, with a 32GB capacity and a read/write speed of 50MB/second. There has been no announced timetable for future SDXC cards but as we all know, technology progress never sits still for long.
How much memory is enough for you? Leave a comment, below!
