Samsung SDHC UHS-I Card PRO review

SD cards have become increasing complex in recent years. This Samsung memory card uses the now-typical SDHC standard, which means it’s compatible with the vast majority of devices in use today – the biggest capacity cards use SDXC instead, which only recent devices support. In addition though this card supports the relatively new UHS-I standard for faster data transfer rates.

UHS-I cards have been very expensive until recently – you could pay £90 for one just last year. The standard is complementary to the older ‘Class’ standard, where the minimum read/write speeds on a given card in MB/s had to match its Class rating (either 2, 4, 6, 8 or 10). The new cards have to exceed the 10MB/s or Class 10 rating, but also have a different UHS-I data bus that can provide far higher speeds with supported devices.

If your camera supports UHS-I then you should be able to see the cache clearing quicker after burst shooting, letting you shoot another burst again quicker. The read speed quoted on this card upto 80MB/s with the write at up to 40MB/s. Our tests showed real-world scores of 58.6MB/s and 19.8MB/s respectively. That makes it among the quickest cards we’ve ever seen for reading files from the card and very quick for writing them too. Tests were carried out with two different USB3 card readers with UHS-I support.

Samsung claims that its cards are made to last, with water, shock, magnetic and x-ray proofing. We were a bit short on X-rays but gave the cards a good going other in the other departments with no ill effects. It’s hard to say how much tougher they are than cards from other manufacturers, but we’re confident they’re up there with the best. Samsung provides a 10-year warranty too.

Best of all the SAMSUNG SDHC UHS-I Card PRO is competitively priced at just £13. Which means it’s worth buying even if your current camera doesn’t support UHS-I. It looks pretty cool too, and if 16GB isn’t enough there’s a 32GB version for just £21, while a 64GB SDXC variant will cost £39 – all from Amazon.