Getting photos off your digital camera will be six times faster with a good card reader--and you'll save your batteries.
Choosing a memory card reader isn't a job for a computer engineer. The first question you need to ask is what formats you'll need. You'll find the answer by investigating which format your digital camera, or your GPS, or your mobile phone uses: SD, miniSD, microSD, CF, xD, MMC or Memory Stick? Some basic card readers don't go beyond SD, miniSD and MMC, so you'll need to see if that's enough for you or if you need to any further. Don't forget that you might upgrade your camera in the future to a model that uses a different memory card format.
Maximum speeds: up from 11 MB/s in SD to 30 MB/s
Once you've decided what formats you'll need, the next question is performance. That's where our tests come into play. We measure the read speeds of different services, and we're glad to say that the average results have improved. The best results have leapt forward, and the result for reading from an SD card has increased from 11 MB/s to almost 30 MB/s today.
At the end of the day, choosing a card reader is a simple enough choice: you need to strike the right balance between price, performance, formats and style.
Finally, we should point out how much of an advantage it is to use a dedicated card reader to copy photos from your camera onto your computer. Connect a Canon G7 to your computer, for instance, and you'll have to wait around six minutes to move 1 GB of photos; a good card reader like Transcend's Multi Card Reader will do the same job in just one minute.
Maximum speeds: up from 11 MB/s in SD to 30 MB/s
Once you've decided what formats you'll need, the next question is performance. That's where our tests come into play. We measure the read speeds of different services, and we're glad to say that the average results have improved. The best results have leapt forward, and the result for reading from an SD card has increased from 11 MB/s to almost 30 MB/s today.
At the end of the day, choosing a card reader is a simple enough choice: you need to strike the right balance between price, performance, formats and style.
Finally, we should point out how much of an advantage it is to use a dedicated card reader to copy photos from your camera onto your computer. Connect a Canon G7 to your computer, for instance, and you'll have to wait around six minutes to move 1 GB of photos; a good card reader like Transcend's Multi Card Reader will do the same job in just one minute.
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