I picked up a cheap Transcend 8GB 600x Ultimate card at Canada Computers the other day just to see what it was like to get spectacular read and write speeds. After all, 600x makes the promise of 90MBps read speeds, which is breathtaking. My fastest cards are all 45MBps so this should be a read treat.
I compared the Sandisk Extreme and The NOS Disk Professional for this quick benchmark. Sandisk promises 45MBps, NOS promises 35MBps and Transcend promises 90MBps. I formatted all of them with SDFormatter before they were tested and I updated the firmware for my Pretec USB 3.0 card reader. I used CrystalDiskMark to do the honours …
Here is the Sandisk Extreme (not the Pro model) … a 300x 16GB card.
The Sandisk actually reads at the promised 300x and writes at 233x. A solid performance for sure.
Here is the NOS Disk Professional, a 233x 32GB card:
The NOS Disk exceeds its promised read speed, hitting 300x every time. Write is a bit slower, but it still manages a very respectable 187x.
And here is the Transcend Ultimate, an 600x 8GB card:
The promised 600x is nowhere to be seen. Reading is decent at 300x, but writing is embarrassing at 133x. Almost any class 10 card can match that.
Perhaps this is a bad shipment … relabeled 300x cards, knock-offs, whatever. I’m just sure now that I need to stay away from Transcend and I would never have thought that before actually trying one.
Sigh …
Note: I have confirmed that, sadly, this is a genuine Transcend card and hence they should never have labelled it as 600x.
