Kingston 32GB Class 4 SDHC Review

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Product: SD4/32GB
Manufacturer: Kingston
Supplied by: Kingston
Price: 139USD/RM484
Launch Date: NA

With increasing the use of large multimedia storage especially for high resolution photography, HD video, mobile applications & storage, the demand for higher storage capacity has increased rapidly. Hence today we will take a look on the latest highest capacity SD card from Kingston which is a 32GB SDHC and it is ideal capacity for today photography or HD video recording.

Company Profile

Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world's independent memory leader. Founded in 1987 with a single product offering, Kingston® now offers more than 2,000 memory products that support nearly every device that uses memory, from computers, servers and printers to MP3 players, digital cameras and cell phones. In 2007, the company's sales exceeded $4.5 billion.

With global headquarters in Fountain Valley, California, Kingston employs more than 4,500 people worldwide. Regarded as one of the "Best Companies to Work for in America" by Fortune magazine, Kingston's tenets of respect, loyalty, flexibility and integrity create an exemplary corporate culture. Kingston believes that investing in its people is essential, and each employee is a vital part of Kingston's success.

Features:

• Capacity* - 4GB, 8GB, 16GB**, 32GB**
• Dimensions - 0.94" x 1.26" x 0.08" (24mm X 32mm X 2.1mm)
• Weight - 0.09 ozs (2.5 g)
• High-Speed Class Rating - Class 2: 2 MB/sec minimum data transfer rate
Class 4: 4 MB/sec minimum data transfer rate
Class 6: 6 MB/sec minimum data transfer rate
• Operating Temperature -13º F to 185º F (-25º C to 85 º C)
• Storage Temperature -40º F to 185º F (-40º C to 85º C)
• Voltage - 3.3v
• Compliant - with the SD Card Association card 2.00 specification
• Secure - built-in write-protect switch prevents accidental data loss
• Compatible - with SDHC host devices; not compatible with standard SD-enabled devices/readers
• File Format - SDHC File Format - FAT32 (only for capacities 4GB and above)
• Reliable - lifetime warranty
• Simple - as easy as plug-and-play

Package & Contents

Kingston SD4/32GB is packed exactly the same way with other Kingston SD card; nothing unique for this 32GB model although it is the most expensive SD card in Kingston SD line of business. Please ensure the right capacity is chosen which is stated on top of the packaging box as well as the device itself. As usual the license key, authentic code and other related product information is written at the back of the packaging box.

Kingston is having a verification program now where user can verify their product by using the license key and authentic code through Kingston website to ensure the genius product is being purchased. Besides that Kingston also stated that SD4/32GB is only compatible with SDHC devices only as SDA V1.01/1.10 devices cannot support SDA V2.00 SD card (SDHC).

Nothing much is bundled along with Kingston SD4/32GB since SD card is a simple device and doesn't require rocket science in order to make it works. Anyway a plastic protective enclosure is included for storing this SD card when it is not being used; a simple and cheap accessory but it is useful for protect your valuable data inside the SD card.

Kingston SD4/32GB

If you are not familiar with SD card, let us talk a little bit about its family. Basically there are three form factors from SD card family; standard SD (32 x 24 mm), mini SD (21.5 x 20 mm) and micro SD (11 x 15 mm). Standard SD card is being widely used especially for digital camera, camcorder while micro SD for mobile phone; mini SD is not that popular as other form factors after micro SD was launched. In term of format, there are total three formats; SD (up to 2GB), SDHC (4 - 32GB) and SDXC (32GB - 2TB).

With the latest announcement of SDXC format, the transfer speed is just amazing as it can reach 104MB/s which is much faster than current format and in future the speed will be increased till 300MB/s. Comparing SDHC with SDXC, speed of SDHC is not as fast as SDXC but at this moment, it is still the most suitable format to be used with its moderate speed, greater support as well as reasonable price. There are three class for SDHC in term of speed; Class 2, class4 and class 6. For moderate performance, it is good to get at least class 4 SDHC which is ideal for photography and video recording.

Kingston SD4/32GB is a standard SD card form factor so it comes with dimension of 32 x 24 mm and such standard SD form factor is being widely used in most of the gadget as it comes with cheaper price and greater support compare with mini SD and micro SD. However micro SD is more popular in mobile phone sector as the standard SD card can't be fitted in else the phone will be bulky.

Another major difference between SD and SDHC is the system format where SDHC SDA V2.00 is using FAT32 while SD SDA 1.01/1.10 is either using FAT12 or FAT16 only. As we can see Kingston SD4/32GB is made in Japan where user should have stronger confidence on this product as "made in Japan" can be translated into other way; "high quality product".

Write protector is an additional lock for SD card to protect the data inside; either to write or to delete but it is accessible for read only. However such lock only available in standard SD form factor not mini SD and micro SD due to size constraint. Besides that Same with SD and SDXC, SDHC is also having 9 pins and require 2.7 - 3.6 voltage supply.

Here is the overall data storage for photo and video in general term. Kingston SD4/32GB is able to store around 5400 picture with 12MP or 15000 with 6MP. In term of video recording, Kingston SD4/32GB is able to store up to 542 minutes of video with 6Mbps HD Extended or 251 minutes with 13Mbps HD High.

Installation, Testing & Performance

SD card is simple device; plug and play so hardware or software installation is not required so let us proceed with its benchmarking and real life testing. For benchmarking, we tested this Kingston SD4/32GB with HDTach and CrystalDiskMark with a decent notebook. For the real life benchmarking, we chose to use our test bed camera; Nikon P90 for daily shooting in all kind of shooting modes.

Test Bed

Notebook: Dell Inspiron E1720
Processor: Intel Mobile Core 2 Duo T7500
Memory: Kingston 4GB HyperX 666MHz DDR2
Hard Drive: 120GB 2.5" 5400RPM 8MB Seagate
Graphic Card: Nvidia GeForce 8400M GS
Optical Drive: DVD RW
Router: TRENDnet TEW-639GR
Mouse: SteelSeries Ikari Laser
Mouse Pad: SteelSeries QcK+
HeadSet: SteelSeries 3H
Notebook Cooler: Vizo Ninja HS
Operating System: Microsoft Window XP SP2
Benchmark Software: HDTach, CrystalDiskMark
Ambient Temperature: 27 Degree Celsius

(Kingston 32GB Class 4 SDHC)

Here are the benchmarking results of Kingston SD4/32GB (top) and our original 4GB SDHC card (bottom) which bundled together with our Nikon P90 digital camera. As you can see, there aren't much performance differences between these two SDHC cards although Kingston SD4/32GB is leading the Nikon 4GB SDHC. The reason of such close performance is due to the speed as both of them are also class 4 SDHC so their performance will be slightly the same. Anyway Kingston SD4/32GB is able to achieve 6MB/s in average and sequence write which is fabulous.

For the real life benchmarking, it is hard for us to judge which SDHC card is faster as both of them are having same class, furthermore they are so close in system benchmarking so it is impossible for a human being to comment on this. However if you are using class 2 SD card and compare with Kingston SD4/32GB then you will see some differences especially in continuous shooting such as sport scene as such scene mode requires fast memory read & write else the digital camera may hang a while before all the photos are completed saved.

Conclusion

Kingston SD4/32GB; a 32GB SDHC card is the largest capacity in SDHC format and if you are looking for a huge capacity memory card then we believe only this 32GB SDHC is the best model that you can get as beyond that is under SDXC format which is still not yet widely being used and most of the devices may not able to support it as well. 139USD for Kingston SD4/32GB could be expensive or reasonable depends how you judge it and how important this capacity for you. If you can wait a little bit longer, we are sure that the price will fall but if you need it so badly then just grab it as technology is keep on changing everyday so no point to wait for it.

Pros:

+ Great capacity; ideal for photography & video recording
+ Decent performance
+ Life time warranty
+ Quality product; "made in Japan"

Cons:

- Not cheap (at this moment)

Thanks to Kingston for providing this sample for us to review.