Do Brands of SD Cards Matter?

Do brands of SD Cards actually Matter?
To a certain degree, the brand of SD cards do matter especially with its performance grade. However, do they really matter?

SanDisk 32GB Class 4

Here are five things I look at when buying an SD Card:

  1.     Data capacity
  2.     Price
  3.     Performance
  4.     Warranty coverage
  5.     Negative reviews via research online.

Data Capacity

For data capacity, I always go for more… I usually prefer up to 16 GB, but for HD video cameras, the high-definition video will take up all the space so I like to use 32GB SD cards.

Price

Price is self-explanatory. The most reasonably priced SD card is what I like. Remember get a card that is not too cheap but not too expensive. As an example, I got a Transcend 32 GB SDHC class 10 card for about 40 bucks in March of 2011. The card work so well despite getting soaked in sea water I bought another card of the same brand!

Performance

Performance is important to me. However, performance and their comparison results among other brands are a bit in the grey area because many results show a lot of similarities between several brands. I think what we want more than performance is quality… However, I will admit that some brands like Sandisk blow others away. Anyway, for SD cards  I  usually buy 32 GB Class 10 SD cards because it’s the highest class for SD.

Warranty

Due to competition among other brands, most SD cards these days have lifetime warranties! AWESOME!

Negative Reviews

I love to read negative reviews about products online because they give me a taste of the quality. Sometimes I find some bullshit posts but most of them are very isolated. However, if you start seeing over 10 posts from different users with the same or similar complaints, that is highly an indication of a poor product.

So what kind of Camera and SD Card am I using?

I am using the world renown GoPro Hero 2! The card I am using is a Transcend Class 10 32 GB card!

However, I’m having some problems with my gopro hero 2camera and  Go Pro Support does not recommend using the Transcend brand at all. They recommended Sandisk. They have also stated that Transcend cards, along with other unspecified brands actually cause problems on some of their cameras.
Here is an actual email support post:

“Hi, Unfortunately we have seen a ton of issues with Transcend cards malfunctioning. It might work on a few of your cameras but it will mostly malfunction on one eventually. Is it possible for you to try a SanDisk or Kingston or Patriot brand card?”

To be honest, I don’t know what to say to that because I’ve been using Transcend on more than 4 GoPro cameras (both Hero’s 1 and 2) and never had a problem with it. I actually got my Transcend SD card wet in sea water along with my GoPro and they still work flawlessly to this day.

I also would not acknowledge the fact that a particular brand can affect how cameras will function. In my case, my when I use a particular brand, my camera would freeze. But was it really the fault of the brand of the SD card? Let’s see.

A Test to Prove its not the brand of the SD Card

To prove that the brand  of the card is not to blame, I conducted a test to find out if the brand of the SD card is at fault!

Just to make sure I bought a SanDisk Extreme Class 10 32GB Card and despite the results this was definitely an educational experiment and a pivotal experiment to what kinds of brand of SD cards I will purchase in the future

Here are the results with video.

More Blogs about the GoPro HD Cam

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