Customer Reviews

HP 4 GB Class 4 SDHC Flash Memory Card L1878A#707-EF

5 star:		(40)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I purchased this to get the free super saver shipping so it worked out to cost me about $1.50 instead of paying for shipping. However, estimated delivery was around 15 days? Doh! ;-)

Anyway, I wanted a card that was at least a class 4 to record HD video with my pansonic point and shoot camera. I've seen a lot of people argue about what the class of the card means and it's actual transfer rates so I thought I'd be safe getting one thats in the middle of the road. There are 4 classes, starting with 2 and ending at 6. Supposedly getting a class 6 doesn't always mean that it will perform better than say a class 2. The old way of classing these cards was to use the X factor. A 133X card would transfer about 20megs a second and so on but I've seen a 4gb usb stick that was 150x that transfered over 40megs a second. Even that way of classing the cards failed to hold up to the reality of benchmarks. So, if I'm going to write a review I may as well make it worth reading by doing some psudo-scientific tests and compare it to an older Crucial 4gb Class 6 card I purchased about 5 months ago. Technically the Crucial with it's mighty class 6 rating should blow the HP out of the water. We'll see.

To do the test, I installed the latest Sisoftware Sandra 2010 benchmarking software and gave these card the once over. Sandra is considered by many to be one of the best benchmarking software programs around! I conducted the test on my brand new Asus 1000HE Netbook which has a really nice SDHC card reader built in and running windows 7 premium. This is the true definition of a "real world test".

Sisandra comes with a large catalog of SDHC cards they tested themselves and this allows you to compare the results showing the best ones all the way down to the poorest performer. You can even compare your SDHC card to a sata hard drive or a 2gb usb flash drive. Whatever floats your boat. The test starts by transfering 512 bites and working it's way up to 512megs and it examines the speed at which it handles the constant stream of data going in and coming out.

My older Crucial 4GB Class 6 shows 2408 ops/minute with an endurance factor of 85.1%. This HP class 4 shows 2261 ops/min with an endurance of 95.3%. They tell me that higher numbers are better. As you can see, there is very little diffference between the Crucial and the HP except I paid about $25 for the Crucial. Both these cards are perfectly fine for ordinary applications and have enough bandwidth to handle at least 720p HD video from your digital point and shoot camera. Most digital cameras limit the recording to 15 minutes anyway, so if all you want to do is capture video with your point and shoot, then you should have good results with this card. Overall, both my cards are ranked #3 in the world of storage devices. If you plan on capturing 1080p HD video you'll probably want to invest more money in better performing cards. Othewise you might get dropped frames as you push the limits of these slower cards. That would create a stuttering effect in your video that you would notice as the camera pans back and forth. You do pretty much get what you pay for here but sometimes you pay double for something that doesn't deliver much more. The old saying comes to mind. "Caveat Emptor - Buyer beware!"

The fastest SD card was the 1GB Peak Xtreme which ran about 8000 ops/min. The fastest SDHC was a Toshiba 16GB which benchmarked at 4950 ops/min. Thats the kind of card you'll want for 1080p video because not only does it handle the bandwidth but it has a lot of capacity to capture those huge 1080p movie files. It won't take you long to fill up 16gb.

To give you a sense of perspective, the 80gb apple ipod transfers at 4422 ops/min. The Viking 1gb compact flash card can transfer at a whopping speed of 232 ops/min. and yes, Viking is still in business and even sell a 64meg SD card here on amazon. Must be useful for some kind of old technology like ancient gaming systems.

Hope this helps you decide what to buy! Take it easy!

HP's 8GB SDHC card appears to be one of the better buys at the time of this review, as far as price/performance/capacity is concerned. In my case, it fulfills the task assigned - store a large number of photos for an electronic picture frame to display. However, its relatively low write speed may NOT make it suitable if the intended use was in a camera taking large 'rapid fire' shots.


PERFORMANCE

I would like to note that I did not test the card with a camera but it's stated 'Class 4' speed class, which is the equivalent of a 26x speed rating should guarantee a MINIMUM of 4MB/s.

Unlike the 'x' ratings, the speed class ratings are NOT certified by an independent body so, more or less, you will have to decide whether you trust the card's maker. It so happens that I DID test the card myself and I found that I could copy 1.6 GB worth of photos in about 5 minutes. This is 5MB/s for writing on the card for the first time, indicating that the Class 4/26x claim is honest.

Practically, if you are going to use this card in a camera, depending on the quality of the pics you are taking, you may or may not be happy with its performance. At 12 megapixels, a 100% quality JPG would produce a 2-3 MB file so, without even counting the overhead, your camera will spend about half second, possibly more to write to the card which may or may not be in line with your own expectation. For better performance, look for a higher 'class' number 133x/Class 20, for example, should support 20 MB/s or writing up to 10 12-megapixel JPG photo files per second.


ADDITIONAL FEATURES/CONCERNS

The card comes formatted as FAT32 and my Vista Enterprise computer was able to write to it. If, for whatever reason, FAT32 is not what you need, you should be able to format it under Windows/Vista, Mac or Unix/Linux to whatever you may need.

Not ALL cameras support FAT32. Older cameras may only be aware of FAT16 and can't see any card larger that 4GB. If in doubt, check with the manufacturer or maybe read your camera's reviews at Amazon.

Related to the above - anyone who may have a device meant to use SD cards should be aware that SDHC may not work with it so it's better to ask the maker.

Finally, one nice thing about HP's card - it comes with a write-protect tab. If you are not using your card in a camera and want to prevent accidental writes, move the tab to the 'lock' position but, be careful, it will NOT work with your camera if you forget to move the tab back to 'unlock'.


RATING

This is a honestly rated Class 4 card. Class 4, as I explained, means SLOW so, if blazing-fast write speed is not an issue, this is probably what you need given the price and the maker's reputation - by the way, the card is manufactured in Japan.

For what it is, the card deserves 5 stars.

The card is working great. The size is very manageable, I can fit 2-4hrs of HD video depending on the resolution chosen. (720p/1080p)

I was attracted to this HP 16 GB Class 4 SDHC Flash Memory Card partially because it is priced lower than other cards in the same class (such as the SanDisk Ultra 16 GB Class 4 and Kingston 16 GB Class 4). Another reason being that it is from Hewlett Packard, a company once known for cutting-edge technology and inventions. After thoroughly testing the performance of this HP card, however, I'm less than thrilled.

Benchmark results (see my uploaded screenshot in Customer Images section) showed that the read-speed of this card is reasonable. It stays at about 18-19MB/s, similar to other class-4 cards. Its write-speed, on the other hand, is highly dependent on the file size:

- For smaller file size of 1MB, its write speed is only 3.7MB/s, or slightly below the requirement for a class-4 card (4MB/s minimum)
- For larger file size of 5MB, its write speed is faster at 7.9MB/s
- For huge files (1GB), its write speed peaked at 10.1MB/s

Just for comparison, my benchmarked write speed for Sandisk Ultra class-4 card is about 50% faster in every category, ranging from 6MB/s to 15MB/s. To the average consumer, however, both HP and Sandisk Ultra cards will perform just the same in a digital point-and-shoot camera (because the frame rate is limited to under 1 fps). Only if you have a digital SLR and shoot in rapid-fire burst mode, then the speed difference will become noticeable.

Considering its lower price, this HP card is still a good value comapred to other class-4 cards. I'm just a bit disappointed that a product bearing the good name of Hewlett Packard turns out to be so mediocre.


Additional notes:
- The real capacity of this '16GB' card, as reported by my computer, is just 14.9GB. This is actually normal, because '1GB' to computer people means '2 to the power 30', which is 7% higher than 1 billion. So 14.9GB works out to be slightly over 16 billion bytes, which means '16GB' according to marketing people.

- The benchmark results for this HP card are nearly identical to that of the Kingston 16GB class-4 card (see my uploaded screenshots for comparison). This makes me suspect that this 'HP' card is actually manufactured by Kingston. Of course, HP could have switched supplier at any time. That may explain why another reviewer (from the product page of AmazonBasics 16GB Class 4 SD Flash Memory Card) claims that he achieved 13.1MB/s write speed with this 'HP' card)

- On the back of this SDHC card is says 'Made in Japan'. But on the back of the package it says 'Made in Taiwan'.

I wanted to buy a higher gig memory card for concerts. I always seem to end up running out right in the middle of filming a favorite song. I take loads of pictures anyways, but this was the main reason I wanted it, I didnt want to have to dig through my bag for a backup, during the show. Worked brilliantly. Filmed loads of HD videos, and hundreds of pictures, and I dont even think its half full. Very happy with this, and the price! Everything I saw at the store for around that price was half the amount of gigs. Very happy with this product!

I have a Nikon D60 and am starting to shoot in RAW + JPEG mode, so I need the extra space (compared to the 2GB and 4GB). Nothing more to say, it works fine. I'd suggested getting one of those cheap card readers too if you plan on using it for other things like digital photo frames, or just to move stuff on and off it, as you can't drop items onto it from computer to camera (at least not my camera).

I got "Buffer Overflow Recording Stopped" message on my Canon HF200 HD camcorder using this card. Obviously, the card's write speed is too slow to keep up with the camcorder's internal buffer. I do not recommend this card for Canon HD camcorders or at least the HF200 or HF20.

Excellent for my 12mp Kodak camera! Good for 800 pictures, purfect for those overseas trips. Great product at a great price. How about a sale for $5 or less!

I would have thought an SD card would have to be pretty bad to disappoint but this one does so without being horrible. The card works at times but will not be read by my computer at other times.

I've purchased flash memory since the 1990s and do not recommend this SD card.

I have been using mine in a canon camera i bought. I haven't used it extensively probably 300 pictures or so what can you say about a memory card. Just make sure you do your research and make sure it goes with what you are going to use it for. The letters and the capacity are the key.