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Buyer's Guide: The Best Monitors 
PNY Compact Flash Optima 16 GB
| Caractéristiques | |||
| Capacity | 16 | ||
| Format | Compact Flash | ||
| Speed | Write Speed: 10 MB/s Read Speed: 18 MB/s | ||
| Guarantee | 5 years | ||
Pierre-Jean Alzieu
Test date: February 5, 2010
Test date: February 5, 2010
RAW + JPEG Burst Mode
Despite PNY's claims, the Optima is anything but the ideal companion for your digital SLR. Its write speed of 11.2 MB/s slowed our Canon 5D Mark II down. To shoot a burst of ten photos (RAW + JPEG), it took 32 seconds; compare that to the 4 seconds the same test took on the SanDisk Extreme Pro 32 GB.
According to PNY, its Optima Compact Flash card is the perfect companion to professional digital SLR cameras, and the manufacturer's website goes on to say that this card is 'highly recommended for burst-mode photography.'
Given these promises, we were expecting some pretty extraordinary speeds, but the card is only listed as transferring data at 10 MB/S and 18 MB/s for writing and reading respectively. PNY might well want to tone its website down a little …
Underestimated speeds
When we tested the card's write speeds, the 16 GB Optima turned out to be faster than PNY suggested. With photos, it reached 8.7 MB/s, compared to the 32 MB/s achieved by the very best Compact Flash cards. For reading data, the Optima almost doubles its advertised speeds by reaching 34.4 MB/s. Even so, this is a fairly slow memory card overall, and we advise you to look elsewhere.
 PNY CF Optima 16 GB  Sandisk CF Extreme Pro 16 GB |
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Speeds MB/s
Time to shoot a burst of ten photos (RAW + JPEG) = 32 seconds
Pluses
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Price
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Good read speeds
Minuses
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Write speeds only just average
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Slows down SLR cameras in burst mode
The Optima 16 GB is one of the slower Compact Flash cards we've tested, and it held our digital SLR test camera back. You'd do better to give it a miss and look for a faster card.
