Transcend curries 4K favor with faster SD cards
For videographers shooting high-resolution video, the Taiwanese flash-card maker has two new choices with faster write speeds and capacities up to 128GB.
- Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Transcend's new SDHC and SDXC cards are graded UHS-1 Class 3 and come in two varieties. The "Extreme" models have read and write speeds of 95MBps and 85MBps, respectively.
The non-extreme models have read and write speeds of 95MBps and 60MBps, respectively.
The newer UHS-1 (Ultra High Speed) Class 3 specification requires sustained write performance of 30MBps.
Yes, SD card categorization is a bottomless pit of acronyms. And here are two more: SDHC and SDXC, which govern maximum capacity. SDHC models top out at 32GB capacity, but SDXC can go much, much higher.
Transcend's SDXC models reach 128GB, enough for 8 hours of UltraHD video shot at a resolution of 4096x2160, with a 35Mbps bitrate and the H.264 AVC compression standard. The Extreme models top out at 64GB, though.
The SDXC Extreme models cost $59 for 32GB and $119 for 64GB. The somewhat slower models cost $49 for 64GB and $109 for 128GB.
