Panasonic 16GB SDHC memory card review

Will this store enough images?

18 January 2008 11:00 GMT / By Stephen Patrick

SD remains one of the most popular card formats around and it’s easy to see why, it’s small easy to use and the introduction of High Capacity cards means you can now extend your storage further.

This latest card from Panasonic packs in an amazing 16GB of flash memory on a standard sized card. Being High Capacity means you won’t be able to use it in devices that don’t already support SD HC, so it’s worth checking before investing.

Basically, if you have an older SD slot you won’t be able to read anything above 2GB. This lack of compatibility is down to the way SD HC cards read data, as they use FAT32, which is more commonly found on mechanical hard drives for addressing the OS.

With 16GB of storage on this latest card you’ll be able to store, on average, 320 hours of music or 100 hours of MPEG4 footage at 384kbps resolution.

In order to process data quickly the card needs a fast controller chip on-board and in this case it’s a Class 6 chip, which means you’re guaranteed a constant data transfer rate of at least 6Mbps with a maximum speed burst of 20Mbps on empty and formatted cards.

Verdict

The Panasonic RP-SDV16GE1K SD HC currently costs £199 (inc. VAT) so isn’t the most cost-effective way of adding storage to your digital device. That said, we found it a fast and reliable card to use and if mass-storage is what you need, this more than delivers on ever level.

Score

Review Recap

Made by: Panasonic
Price as reviewed: £199
The good: Fast, big capacity
The bad: Only work with SD HC devices
Quick verdict: This isn’t the fastest card on the market but with 16GB of storage, it’s currently one of the most capacious
Score