The 4in1 Full Mobility pack is ideal for users who would like to have the most useful and most widely-compatible memory card currently available and are prepared to sacrifice transfer speeds to have it. 

The pack is made up of a 2GB PNY Micro SD card (for mobile phones), and three adaptors: a Micro SD (to fit mobile phones), an SD (for digital cameras and GPS) and USB 2.0 (to transfer files onto a computer).

The tests that we conducted on this card showed a very big difference between the speeds for reading and writing data with this card.  Copying photo or music files from a computer onto the card is very slow.  Even when we used an excellent card reader instead of the adaptor that is supplied, we could only manage a speed of 4.4 MB/s; a good card should be closer to 13 MB/s.  In terms of our product survey then, the 4in1 is definitely trailing behind.  To copy 2 GB onto the card, you need to allow 7 minutes 45 seconds, even though the Sandisk SDHC Extreme III 4 GB can do the same job in 2 minutes 40 seconds.  That’s pretty rubbish if you plan to frequently update your playlists on a card that powers your phone’s MP3 player.

As for reading from the card, that is, copying files onto the computer, which is important for most users as it’s the speed that counts when uploading photos from a digital camera, completely the opposite is true.  PNY has one of the best times available and the whole card can be emptied at up to 17.7 MB/s.

USB Adaptor

We did the same tests using the supplied USB 2.0 adaptor.  It’s a handy solution, and very easy to use, but the transfer speeds are even more feeble.  3.5 MB/s for writing and 3.8 MB/s for reading.  You’d be better off keeping a good card reader to hand if you want to avoid an excruciating wait with this card …