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Patriot Memory LX Series 32GB SDHC Memory Card


Date
: 12/9/09 – 03:20:05 AM

Author
:

Category
: Storage

Page 1 : Introduction

Manufacturer
: Patriot Memory

Most portable high definition photography and camcorder equipment use Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) memory cards and having the right type memory makes a huge difference. The faster your memory card can write, the more pictures you capture before the buffer is full and less waiting before another picture can be captured. As you can guess, the time you least want your buffer to be full is going to be when that picture perfect moment passes before your eyes. Before you know it, it is gone and you're still waiting for the buffer to clear.

The Patriot LX Class 10 SDHC memory card offers guaranteed sequential write speeds of 10MB/s. If you bought an SDHC card in the last year, it probably was a Class 6. The increase of 4 MB/s means you'll be able to clear your camera's or camcorder's buffer faster and get right back to shooting.

Page 2 : Features & Specifications

Most of us probably already know exactly what a Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) card can do so the question really is, what does the LX Series offer that the competition doesn't? Here's what Patriot Memory has to say:

The Patriot LX Class 10 SDHC memory card offers blazingly fast performance to capture your images or video as they happen without missing a moment. The LX Class 10 SDHC memory cards are fully compatible with the latest SD Association specifications calling for a minimum sustained write speed of 10MB/s and offer an incredible performance improvement over earlier SDHC standards. Fast enough to record High Definition 1920 x 1080 resolution video, our LX Class 10 SDHC cards keep up with the most demanding new photography and video equipment making them perfect for a new DSLR user or the seasoned professional. Patriot LX Class 10 SDHC memory cards are available in 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities and offer a 5 year warranty. Remove the bottleneck of slow memory. Capture every image or video without missing a moment. Depend on the Patriot XL Class 10 SDHC card.

If you take a look at the Specification page, the 32GB capacity model is so big and new that even Patriot Memory hasn't quite figured out how many pictures or songs it can hold! If you really want to know, it's a lot. You'll get over 10,000 pictures on a 6 Megapixel digital camera and over 25,000 MP3s!

Page 3 : Package & Contents

The Patriot Memory LX is packaged in a blister pack which has lots of extra space to display details about the memory card. The blister pack is made out of recyclable material and can be recycled which makes me happy as the last thing I want is to throw plastic into the garbage.

The front of the package clearly displays the SDHC card in its protective case and on the back we have three features listed: use only with SDHC compatible devices, 10 Megabytes per second minimum sustained write speed and Windows XP/Vista and Mac compatible.

There isn't too much to see on the LX Series SDHC card. On the front of the card we have the Patriot Memory logo, the capacity and identification that it is Class 10 and SDHC.

The write protection slider prevents accidental data deletion. The back of the card has the contacts for data transfer and the model and serial number is ever so faintly printed on.

Page 4 : Testing & Performance

I tested my Patriot Memory 32GB LX Series card with my Canon SD880 IS digital camera. This is a 10.0 Megapixel camera and with the largest resolution and highest level of detail, I was able to shoot 7193 pictures. Even if I managed to take 200 pictures a day, this memory card would be adequate for over a month!

Sliding in the memory stick into my Samsung High Definition Digital camcorder, it indicated that I could record 292 minutes at 1080p. The large capacity will let me capture a vacation or any special occasion without having to change memory sticks.

With digital cameras and camcorders it is hard to determine if the LX Series is actually capable of sustaining 10MB/s sequential write so I've called on a few applications to gauge the performance. First we'll use Crystal Disk Mark where I will set the test file to 1GB.

Moving on, I will use IOMeter. IOMeter is an I/O subsystem measurement and characteristic tool for single and clustered systems initially designed by Intel.

IOMeter is both a workload generator (that is, it performs I/O operations in order to stress the system) and a measurement tool (that is, it examines and records the performance of its I/O operations and their impact on the system). It can be configured to emulate the disk or network I/O load of any program or benchmark, or can be used to generate entirely synthetic I/O loads. It can generate and measure loads on single or multiple (networked) systems.

I configured IOMeter to create a 1GB file on the target device, Patriot Memory 32 LX SDHC, and it will pull the performance over 5 minutes and report back the average transfer rate for various block size transfers: 4KB, 16KB and 32KB.

Both Crystal Disk Mark and IOMeter only test a portion of the drive and in order to see the performance from start to finish I switched to HD Tach for the final benchmark.

As you can see, Patriot Memory lives up to its claim of being a Class 10 drive. Based on the numbers above, it would even qualify for Class 15!

Page 5 : Conclusion

Patriot Memory has always been one of my preferred memory suppliers. They continue to deliver quality products at a reasonable price. The 32GB LX Series SDHC is no different. With a current market price of $110, there is less than a 20 dollar price premium when compared to a 32GB Class 6.

The Patriot LX clocks in close to 16MB/s for sequential write and well over 20MB/s sequential read. With a 5 year warranty and compliance with the next generation of SD 3.0, the LX will be good for much longer than the life of your camera or camcorder… unless you upgrade at my rate!

Advantages

• Fast read and write performance
  
  
• Reasonably priced compared to Class 6 cards

Disadvantages

• Limited availability

I'd like to thank Patriot Memory for making this review possible.