Customer Reviews

Transcend 16 GB SDHC Class 10 Flash Memory Card TS16GSDHC10E

5 star:		(1,101)
4 star:		(226)
3 star:		(83)
2 star:		(71)
1 star:		(206)

 

 

Length:: 1:10 Mins

UPDATE 9-10 I own 4 of these cards now. I have more of these than any other card I own because they are a very good value for capacity/price/and speed. My initial disappointment over the lack of super high speed is outweighed by the reality that this card is an exceptional value.

If you own a compact digital camera, or SD/HD video camera, this card will exceed the capabilities of all of them. For compact cameras the card isn't usually the slowest part of the data write process, it's the camera.
This card unloads very quickly with a 20MB/s read speed. You will need a SDHC card reader if you don't have one. A standard SD card reader will not read a HC (high capacity) card.

These cards make great gifts. I have given several of the 8 Gig cards as gifts and have received appreciation and great comments from all the recipients.

UPDATED REVIEW:
I purchased this card making the assumption that all class 10 cards had the same read and write speed. This was a poor assumption on my part. In order for a card to qualify for class 10 speed the card needs to be certified to have 10MB/s write and read speed. Some manufacturers classify their cards at a slower speed even though they qualify for a higher class. SanDisk make some cards that would qualify for class 10 and rates them as class 6.

The product photo on Amazon does not have the card's speed printed on it. The card that was shipped shows the front of the card printed with "20MB/s" which is the cards read speed. The cards write speed is 16MB/s.

I own a SanDisk Extreme III class 10 card that has (up to) 30MB/s read and write speed. My Nikon D-90 that can take advantage of the SanDisk cards speed. The difference is the SanDisk card can capture 100 photos at fine resolution in 24 seconds. The Transcend card captures 66 photos in the same time/resolution.

I reality very few people will ever have the need to drill off 100 photos in 24 seconds, but I can't stand to lose a good shot because the camera is slow while writing to the card and I can't fire the shutter. You can hear this happen at about 4.5 seconds in the video review. This does not happen with the SanDisk class 10 30MB/s card.


If you own an SLR that is capable of rapid fire, high-resolution photography you may want to consider the SanDisk Extreme III 30 MB/s card. It is expensive.


This card is reasonably priced for a class 10 card. Just know what you are getting, what your needs may be, and what else is available. I own other Transcend cards and they have always worked properly without any issues.

The video that I attached shows this card with the same 24 seconds that I gave the SanDisk Card.

To see the SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s video demo and review on Amazon go to:

Sandisk SDSDX3-008G-E31 8GB Extreme III SD Card 30MB/s (RETAIL PACKAGE)

I purchased this for use with my new Canon T2i. I use it primarily for shooting full resolution 1080p video, although I shoot stills as well.

The camera choked on the class 4 chip that I originally purchased, but with this one, it is amazing. I can shoot rapidfire 18 megapixel stills (I've tested it up to 30+ shots in a row), and there is no lag. I've never had an error when shooting hi-def video.

Highly recommended! I'm buying another one.

I bought this card for my Canon T1i. The card I had been using before ordering this one was a Kingston Class 6 micro sd card and it worked well enough for the type of shooting I did. Class 6 was the card speed that Canon recommended when I bought my T1i (Class 10 cards were not yet available) and it seemed fast enough for the way I used my camera - isolated single photos taken at Medium (8 MP) or Large (15 MP) jpg settings and 1280 x 720 video. And while I ocassionally took continuous photos, I had never much exceeded 5-10 photos in a row and had never run into a problem with my Class 6 card.

When I first saw the Class 10 cards I did some experiments with my camera. How many continuous Large photos could I take before the camera slowed down? It turned out to be about 30. And how many RAW photos could I take before the camera slowed down? It turned out to be about 9. SInce I did not generally take any photos in RAW and never needed more than about 10 continuous photos at Large, the Class 6 card seemed more than sufficient for my needs. But I wondered about the speed of the Class 10 cards enough that I finally bought one.

It turns out that the Class 10 card is sufficiently fast that there does not seem to be a reasonable upper limit on single Large photos. I have taken 60 on continuous without an issue. And although I still cannot take more than 9 RAW photos on continuous with the Class 10 card, when I am finished taking those photos the camera no longer displays a Wait - writing pictures screen. The RAW photos get written from the built-in memory to the card so quickly that the camera does not need to display the Wait screen.

So this card is fast! Given the way I take photos this purchase was unnecessary, but still I am glad I bought it. I know I will not run into a situation where speed is an issue with this card.

I will be writing this review for both SanDisk Extreme SDHC class 10 8gb and Transcend SDHC class 10 16gb.

I bought SanDisk class 10 and Transcend class 10 for my new Panasonic LX5. I got both card because no one really did a comparison with a compact camera and I was just going crazy trying to see if there is any big difference between the 2 cards.

SanDisk Extreme package box indicated it's water proof, x-ray proof, shock proof, temperature proof. I am not ready to spend $50 to see if it really stand up to it's words. And I don't think normal people would go through the extreme condition in taking pictures or videos.

Cut the story short, I really want to see if there is any difference in writing performance between the 2 cards in a compact camera. There is a continuous burst mode in LX5 and the manual indicated it is only limited by the condition of picture environment and performance of the SD card. Within the mode there are 2 different settings:1) speed priority or 2) picture/quality priority. The shutter speed is much faster with speed priority compare to picture priority.

I first formatted both cards out of box then put each card in series of test(3 rounds each setting for each card) shooting at the same object under same lighting condition. The results:
Speed Priority:
SanDisk Class 10 8gb
22-33 shots before camera stopped to allow the card to catch up with writing.

Transcend Class 10 16gb
22-24 shots before camera stopped to allow the card to catch up with writing.

Picture priority
SanDisk Class 10 8gb
34-46 shots before camera stopped

Transcend Class 10 16gb
27-33 shots before camera stopped


It seems that at a higher shutter speed, both cards performed very similar under the same shooting condition. But at a slower shutter speed the SanDisk definitely out perform Transcend. I hope this little experiment satisfied anyone with curiosity like me. Transcend definitely is a bargain with 16gb and almost half of the price compare to SanDisk. But I am going to use SanDisk Extreme as my primary card and Transcend as backup or on a second camera to ensure i would not miss any shots.

OK. this card was around $47 for a class 10 16gb. The other card i bought was a Sandisk class 10 8gb for the around same price. I did a 10 sec stop watch test on both cards with my Rebel T1i on raw and the Sandisk was only faster by 1 shot in a 10 sec burst. to me it seems trivial to pay 47 bucks for a Sandisk 8gig when you can get 16 gigs for the same price. yes i know, the Sandisk is good for arctic and desert temperatures... but i live in western NY... not Antarctica or the Sahara. If your looking for a good card, with more gigs for your buck, the Transcend is well worth it.

I have two of these cards and bought them to use with a Canon 60D. My camera manual calls for class 6 or better. I thought I was saving money buying the transcend Class 10 for less than the SanDisk Class 6. This card is not capable of recording HD video on the 60D. It is not fast enough. After a couple seconds of shooting video the camera shows an ons creen indicator that looks like a buffer filling and ceases recording.

There is something everyone buying SD cards should know:

"Even though the class ratings are defined by a governing body, like × speed ratings, class speed ratings are quoted by the manufacturers and not verified by any independent evaluation process."

Long story made short this card is far slower than the SanDisk Extreme HD Video 16 GB SDHC Class 6 Memory Card (SDSDRX3-016G-A21). I had to demote both of these cards for use with point and shoot cameras.

Basically pay no attention to class when choosing a SD card, instead look at the read / write speeds.

The "C10" is for "minimum sustaining speed" of 10mbps. The sustaining speed is critical if you're using for HD camcorder. There is other brand card that is also c10 but it costs more (2x) for its print of 30mbps on the card. It leads consumers into thinking that the higher price is worth for the 30mbps. However, the 30mbps is the "burst" speed. Burst speed is critical for HD camera and for doing copies. I have a HD camcorder and I'm very satisfied with this card after many hours for recording. I bought this card to do 100% of recording so it is the right price. I would buy the other high price brand card of 30mbps if I will do a lot of picture taking. The bottom line is to buy for the purpose of your usage.

SUMMARY:


DO NOT BUY THIS CARD UNLESS YOU WANT TO PLAY RUSSIAN ROULETTE WITH YOUR DATA. Card worked fine when I bought it, but malfunctioned within the first 400 photos -- malfunctioned so badly that some very technical tools were needed to recover anything at all, and some photos were still permanently lost. Recovering the data requires the attention of a serious data recovery expert or someone with substantial technical knowledge and lots of time.


DETAILS:

I made the mistake buying this card for my camera right before a long trip overseas. It worked fine on the first few dozen shots. I didn't see any improvement in speed over my trusty 1.5-year-old Transcend 8GB Class-6 card, but that was most likely because the camera itself (Canon EOS Rebel 1000D/XSi) could not write images any faster than that (full-size JPEG, continuous shutter mode, roughly did ~2.5-3 images/second on both cards, with no slowdown after the first few shots).

200 shots or so into using this card, I get a sudden mysterious message from the camera when I try to take a new shot -- Card Format Invalid (never saw it in the previous 1.5 years on this camera with 3 other SDHC cards). I look around for a bit, and discover that turning the camera off, pulling the card out and putting it back in is enough to clear the error message, and the previous photos are still visible.

I then make the mistake of assuming the problem is just that -- needing to "reboot" the camera when the card is acting stupid, and nothing else. Over the next 200 or so shots, this problem comes up every 50 shots or so. Then, after yet another "reboot", I notice that the camera's playback function is only showing the last 30 photos!!! Yet it shows that there's only 5.7G of space left on the camera -- the other 2G+ _should_ be taken up by the photos I've shot thus far, but the playback doesn't show them.

And this happens in the middle of a trek through the Peruvian Andes, several days' walk/horse ride from the first village with electricity, let alone a computer (with lots of once-in-a-lifetime shots on the camera). I pull this card out immediately, plug in my backup card, and wait until coming back to civilization to take a look at the card. Sure enough, the card is severely corrupted -- the directory listing is showing a bunch of folders with weird-character names, and only the last ~30 photos are visible from the computer, too!


RECOVERY SUGGESTIONS:

Hopefully you'll read this before buying and will not buy this piece of junk card. If you had the misfortune of running into the same problem and losing your data, read on.

I have now had time to examine what was left on the card, using tools that are not easily usable to people without substantial technical training. I've managed to recover over 90% of my photos, but this was NOT easy, and I suspect that even some shops specializing in data recovery from failed disks may not know how to get your data back -- this is NOT as simple as just undeleting a file!

Non-technical instructions:

1. As soon as you see the FIRST error involving the card format, turn off the camera, pull out the card, and copy all of your photos to a different device (computer/harddrive/whatnot). The earlier you stop using this card, the safer your photos will be.

2. As soon as the first problem happens, move the little plastic slider on the side of the card to the "Lock" position -- this will prevent anything else from being written on the card, which lowers the risk of what's left of your photos being overwritten.

3. If you see directories (aka folders) with weird names when you plug this card into a computer -- or see a huge number of photos missing when you look at them on the camera, take the card out IMMEDIATELY, and take the card to a data recovery shop or a technical expert willing to look at the card in depth. Give them a printout of the explanation below.


Technical details:

At least in my case, the filesystem was indeed somehow damaged, perhaps by the camera deciding to write over the location of the root directory somehow. I took a full disk image of the card, and operated on the disk image only (there were no read errors when making the image, FWIW). Somehow I was lucky enough to have the original _subdirectories_ \DCIM and \DCIM\100CANON survive on the card intact even though the root directory structure now pointed to a different, new, place on the filesystem as \DCIM.

I found the location of the old 100CANON directory on the filesystem by searching for one of the filenames I knew would exist in the old directory, like IMG_7000, across the whole disk image.

I then edited the filesystem (yea, with a hex editor!) to have the new \DCIM directory point to the old 100CANON subdirectory. See the Wikipedia article on FAT32 for a reasonably easy reference on how to find the 4 bytes that need to be edited, and how to calculate the correct updated value.

Mounting the edited disk image (with Linux's 'mount -t loop'), the directory was intact, and all but about 5% of the photos were completely intact as well -- the remainder must have been overwritten after the directory structure got corrupted. Depending on how long it takes the user to notice a problem, of course, much more damage could easily happen to the original data.

Here's one easy hack to see how much you can hope to recover, if you're recovering camera data. The same trick may be useful for locating the JPEGs if the original image-containing directory is no longer intact (good luck with recovery then! I thankfully didn't have to do this). Take any image produced by the same camera, look at its JFIF headers. My camera leaves the string "Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XS" in two places in every JPEG it creates, early on in the JFIF header. Search for that string across the whole filesystem. If there's, say, 500 hits, that means you can hope for [easy] recovery of at most 250 photos -- any photo that is missing the JFIF headers will be missing the first chunk of the file, and will make it very hard both to find _and_ to reconstruct the remaining data, if any, into a usable JPEG (I have not tried to do this, at least, and it seems very hard).

This may be the cheapest and it may save you $12 over other brands but please ask yourself how much is the data you are putting on it worth? The data I trusted to this POS was in my eyes priceless...but the recover will only cost a little over $150. At this point there are 44 1-star reviews and most of them deal with data loss. BELIEVE IT! Do the math...there is almost a 10% failure rate based on reviews and pay an extra 10-15 bucks for a better product!

At the time I am writing this review, the Transcend 8gb class 10 SDHC card is priced at an incredible value. That is the primary reason why I am giving this SDHC card a high rating. Frankly, as far as class 10 memory goes, this is a pretty slow card, and I think it performs more like a class 4 in terms of write speed. However, for most people, this card is really fast enough. It can copy images to a computer very quickly, and most people don't even have a camera with shooting speeds that are limited by the memory card. If you own a dSLR, and speed is your concern, check out SanDisk class 10. If getting reasonable speeds at a bargain price is your concern, look no further and buy this card.

I compared the following four SD memory cards:

1) Kingston 2 GB SD Flash Memory Card 2-Pack SD/2GB-2P
2) Lexar SDHC 4 GB Class 6 Flash Memory Card 100x Jewel Case Envelope Bulk LSD4GBBE100
3) Transcend 8GB Class 10 SDHC Card (TS8GSDHC10)
4) Sandisk 8GB Extreme SDHC Card-Class 10 (SDSDX3-008G-A31)

I compared the photo shooting speeds and the speeds to copy pictures onto a computer for the four different SD cards. I inserted the SD card into my Canon T1i dSRL, formatted the SD card, and shot in RAW+jpeg (which in this case was two files, 19.5mb and 4.7mb respectively). I timed how long it took to shoot 20 pictures, and then I timed how long it took to move those 40 files onto my computer. The T1i buffer filled up after 4.5 shots, so the remaining shots all depended on the write speed of the memory card. I didn't see too much difference in the time it took to copy the files to my computer, but there was a noticeable difference in the shooting speeds. The SanDisk class 10 SDHC card was clearly the fastest, but it was also the most expensive.

Shooting Speed
1) SanDisk 8gb class 10 SDHC (24 sec)
2) Kingston 2gb SD (38 sec)
3) Lexar 4gb class 6 SDHC (39 sec)
4) Transcend 8gb class 10 SDHC (45 sec)

Copy to Computer Speed
1) SanDisk 8gb class 10 SDHC (34 sec)
2) Kingston 2gb SD (34 sec)
3) Lexar 4gb class 6 SDHC (38 sec)
4) Transcend 8gb class 10 SDHC (40 sec)

Besides the speed differences, I have not noticed any other difference between these four memory cards. They are all compatible with everything I have (except for a few things that do not take SDHC cards). I have never lost anything on an SD card, and none of my cards have ever broken or failed. However, I do take very good care of them, and I always format the cards after copying pictures onto my computer. Depending on your needs, you may not need 8gb, or you may not need very fast write speeds. If speed matters to you, go with SanDisk...it is the fastest. Otherwise, consider a cheaper alternative.