Customer Reviews

Olympus 200844 256 MB xD-Picture Card

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I bought this card for my olympus 300 digital camera just before leaving the US for 2 weeks in Europe. I used the card daily, taking at least 50 pictures at high resolution a day. One day I actually shot over 200 pictures. It worked flawlessly every time.

Measuring at an incredibly small 0.8 x 1.0 x 0.07 inches, xD picture cards are a new flash storage format jointly developed by Fuji and Olympus, the two largest manufacturers of digital cameras in the world, as a futuristic successor to the SmartMedia card. The xD cards are actually manufactured by Toshiba, known for its promotion of the competing Secure Digital (SD) flash storage format, and are about 1/3 the size of a SmartMedia card and slightly smaller than SD and MMC cards. (Confused by the alphabet soup yet?)

Sidebar: xD stands for "extreme digital"

But smallness does not mean lameness. Fuji and Olympus promise very high read/write speeds (3MB/sec for writes and 5MB/sec for reads) as well as lower power consumption for the xD cards. They also claim that eventually xD's capacity will reach 8GB (!!!), although no timetable has been set. Right now xD cards come in 32MB, 64MB, 128MB and 256MB flavors, and generally cost 50% more than same-capacity SD cards, but their prices are likely to drop quickly as more digital cameras accept the format.

Which brings us to the critical question, how many digital cameras accept xD cards? Not many at this point, and digital cameras that accept SmartMedia cannot use xD. But given the market clout of Olympus and Fuji, we'll surely see more xD-friendly models soon. The question is whether other camera producers (Canon, Nikon, Kodak, Toshiba...) will also adopt the technology. My prediction is since Canon has made a commitment to continued use of CompactFlash, they are unlikely to go with the xD. Toshiba manufactures xD cards for Fuji and Olympus, so they may adopt it if they see serious commitment by the latter two.

Since so far few cameras use the xD format, there is little real-world comparison between xD and competing formats such as SD and Sony's MemoryStick/MemoryStick PRO. Whether you'll need xD is entirely dependent on whether the digital camera you choose will accept it. My advice is pick a digital camera without regard to the storage format it takes, because all the formats out there -- SD, MMC, SM, CF, MS, and now xD -- get the job done.

Several reviewers have indicated xD memory is a commodity. Buyer beware: If you have an Olympus digital camera, and you shoot in the Panorama mode (which I use regularly and really like when snowboarding and backpacking), you HAVE TO HAVE AN OLYMPUS BRANDED xD CARD; non-Olympus cards don't support and won't enter the mode

I have never used SD cards, so I cannot comment on their comparison. However, I can comment on my 256 XD Card. This card is awesome. I can take over 300 pictures without worrying about running out of space. It is an amazing upgrade from the card that comes with the camera. Bottom line is that this card does exactly what you need it to do. I have also not found it to be slow or unreliable. It works each time, every time, and fast.

This is a great card if you want to shoot video or shoot high mb photos. Unfortunately for Amazon, its less than $80 at Costco.

I picked up one of these a few weeks ago to complement my 128mb and 64mb cards. The first thing I notice is it takes longer for the camera (Olympus C-60) to ready itself to shoot when using the 256 card instead of the 128s or 64s. This has caused me to miss a few shots already. While it's nice to be able to take 175 HQ shots without having to change the card, I'm not sure how I feel about the tradeoff with that initial access speed. I've taken to leaving the camera open to avoid it, which runs the battery down faster.

I bought this card as the 16 MB card included with my camera was really not worth using. I have used this card EXTENSIVELY and never had a problem. It writes quickly, transfers quickly and produces top notch images. Highly recommend - it is better than the Fuji xD card.

I think the 256 MB xD card is a must have for the Olympus 765-C camera that I bought but the only problem I had with it thus far is that apparently the memory card gets confused if you try looking at the pictures you have taken when the battery is low and the card will lose all of its data and ask you to reformat. There was no warning of this anywhere in the manual and I had lost close to 100 pictures that I had taken while on vacation. I sent it to a Data Recovery place and they said that they could do nothing to get the pictures back. It's a good card but there should be a warning somewhere. I have never had a low battery completely wipe out a memory card before.

This Xd card was bought with an Olympus Stylus 300 camera and they have been working flawlessly together. At a high resolution, the card will easily hold over 200 pictures, great for vacations since you will only need one memory card. Very satisfied!

This card has been great for like 3 months. It has 320 pictures on my Olympus d535 camera. No problems. I like the size because you can take it to weddings and family events and never have to worry about running out of space.