Memory card speed question.

[flyin-lowe]

I was told to get a class 6 card as they were the fastest. I was looking on the internet and saw that class 2 was 2 mb/sec min., class 4 was 4 mb/sec min. etc. I have a Lexar Platinum II 2 gig card brand new I got from someone and noticed on the package that it did not give a class speed but says 9 mb/sec and also says 60x. However one one of the web pages it is listed as a class 4 card. Is the class system consitent through the different manufacturers or what. Also is this a decent card?

 

[Dubious Drewski]

Don't pay attention to the "Class #" or the "###X" nomenclature. Just go by the Mb/Sec rating; it's the only rating that actually means something and it's the only number that's consistent across brands.

Class 2, Class 4, Class 6, etc are just as relevant as "Fast", "Super fast", "Super Duper fast!". Ignore it.

Tangent Rant Ahead:

I wish all memory cards were rated in Mb/sec and ONLY in that, none of this Class stuff. Keep it simple. And why do manufacturers insist on keeping the 3X, 5X, 10X rating for lenses in point and shoot cameras? Once you understand how that number is derived, you realize how incredibly useless that number is. Why can't they use the actual effective focal length and only that? It would make everything so much simpler!

"Yes, these two cameras are both 15X zoom, but their lenses are still completely different ranges, because this one starts wider"

I hate explaining that to customers all the time.

And on SD cards, why do marketers insist on putting "for video" or "for photos" on them? Again, it doesn't simplify any damned thing. It just confuses the customer, who now thinks there are SD cards out there that can't store photos because they are "for video"! ARGH!

Sometimes, I wish I could take over the industry just for a day, so I could change these little things.

 

[Big Mike]

You most likely won't notice a difference in card speed while shooting anyway. That is mostly a function of the camera's buffer.

 

[ANDS!]

Don't pay attention to the "Class #" or the "###X" nomenclature. Just go by the Mb/Sec rating; it's the only rating that actually means something and it's the only number that's consistent across brands.

Erm, the different classes of SD cards ARE broken down by transfer rate. It's not a gimmicked nomenclature.

 

[Dubious Drewski]

Erm, the different classes of SD cards ARE broken down by transfer rate. It's not a gimmicked nomenclature.

Ultra II used to mean 20Mb/sec. Just recently and without warning, they changed Ultra II to 30Mb/sec. There was confusion at work because the packaging looked the same but the price rang in differently than what we were used to.

And so, the label "Ultra II" is meaningless. And putting the cards into class levels is useless; that's too vague. The only rating card manufacturers should be putting on their packaging is the Mb/sec rating. That is it. Anything else is just harmful obfuscation.

 

[MikeBcos]

The class of an SD cad is the guaranteed minimum data transfer rate, most cards are capable of faster rates.

Everything you ever wanted to know about SD Cards: Secure Digital card - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[dizzyg44]

The reason for the new class rating is to bring a uniform rating across the board regardless of manufacturer.

It was getting crazy with everyone have their own terminology for speed ratings and measurements.

General,Super, ultra, MuthaEffin super duper fast, whatever. Some would state minimum speeds, some would state maximum speeds (that you'd never see in real world), average, etc.....

The class rating is a standard which states their Guaranteed minimum sustained speed.

Meaning if it ain't steadily transferring at least this rate, you can say hey this damned thing is defective and they say yeah, you're right let's replace it. Whereas it's usually, oh you're card is 144thouXXX UltraSuperXXVII but you're only transferring at 2 bytes a second? 2 bytes a second is better than nothing so we don't care....