tl;dr: Fast memory card, get it. Patriot is good. Still awesome after 6 months.
For those of you who are unsure of what card to buy/feel like brushing up on your memory standards:
SDHC was created as a successor to the SD (Secure Digital) and MMC (MultiMediaCard) formats. When the original SD format was created a while ago, its maximum capacity was 2GB. Since flash memory is so cheap now, you'll rarely find any SD card other than the maximum 2GB flavor around anywhere. Enter SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity). SDHC adds two main things to the former SD format:
-More capacity
-A minimum speed rating (aka 'Class x')
8GB is pretty much equivalent to the space of a double-sided DVD. Yeah, an entire double-sided DVD in the size of a stamp. 2000 moderate quality mp3's, 11 CD's, over 1100 12MP photos, and depending on your camera's format anywhere from 30 minutes (MJPEG probably) to 90 minutes (DIVX/MP4) of 720p HD video, over 3 hours of VGA video @ 30fps--it's pretty sweet.
Class is important here if you do any of the following:
-'Burst mode' photography (multiple frames per second)
-Large image file photography (dealing with RAW formats and such)
-30fps videos of any resolution, moreso with HD video
-Use this card as additional storage on your netbook.
This card is rated as Class 6. This means the MINIMUM transfer speeds, ie: reading and writing, happen at a minimum of 6MB/s (that's megaBYTEs not megaBITs per second). I tested this card with a few large file transfers from my laptop, and found the following (EDIT: scroll down a little for updated read/write speeds):
Write: 9.5MB/s avg
Read: 21.9 MB/s avg, 22.2 MB/s max
Access time: 0.7ms
This is fast enough for taking all VGA (640x480) video, about two higher quality 10MP photos every second, and most 720p HD (1280x720) video. It should be ample as extra storage in a netbook, though it's about a third the speed of a notebook hard drive. Class 6 is a sweet spot right now in terms of price/performance. Class 10 is much faster but of course much more expensive, and class 4 isn't that much cheaper IMHO.
A note on capacity: Capacity is measured really stupidly in all digital media storage (hard drives, memory cards, etc). All companies define a gigabyte to be 1000MB, and a megabyte to be 1000kb, etc etc. In reality it's 1024KB per MB, and 1024MB per GB. Not a huge difference, going from 1024 to 1000, right? Well, sort of. This card has a capacity of 8,027,897,896 bytes after formatting (manufacturers will say 'See! Over 8 billion bytes!),' which equates to 7.47GB. When you're wondering where the other 0.5GB went, it's because manufacturer conversions ate it. I hope they're happy. Ah well. Patriot is cool.
Anyways, this card is great. Patriot is pretty awesome with memory, and I see their customer service reaching out to people who have had memory mishaps all the time on here and on Newegg.
Hope this helps some people. Sorry if I confused anyone! Happy, erm, memory-writing?
That is all.
::EDIT June 9, 2010::
That it not all! :)
Others have stated this card is slightly thicker than normal. I didn't notice originally but perhaps it's true. I have not encountered a reader/camera/computer where it didn't fit yet, so I'm not sure. FURTHER EDIT: It's the *exact same size* in every dimension (as far as I can tell) as three other SD cards that I have.
A note on read and write speeds that I posted earlier: you will probably see better speeds from your computer than your camera. Here's an updated comparison of its average performance after using the card for a few months:
In my camera:
Read: 6.2 MB/s
Write: 6.6 MB/s
In my computer:
Read: 21.4 MB/s
Write: 10.3 MB/s
Here you see the limitations of a camera's SDHC card controller. What this means is my camera can only talk to the card at a certain speed, but my computer (being more powerful than my camera) can talk to the card much faster. Despite this it's still plenty fast enough for 720p video in my camera. I have a simple point and shoot, so your camera might be different. What's the point of this? Honestly, not much. But I'm sure someone will find it interesting!
So 6 months and thousands of photos and videos later, it's still a fast and reliable card.
::Quick further edit June 12, 2010::
The card is more rigid and more well-built than my older Lexar/SanDisk SD cards. I can't take it apart without destroying it. It's not thicker, either.
*That* is all. Patriot 8 GB Class 6 SDHC Flash Memory Card PSF8GSDHC6
If you would have asked me 2 months ago, I would have given this little 16GB SDHC card 5 stars. At the end of last year, I purchased two for my digital camcorder. Using a SanDisk reader, I got 20MB/s read and 19MB/s write -- way above the Class 6 minimum. Very satisfied.
So, based on this, I purchased a third for my spouse's DSLR in February. To my surprise, it appears identical, even with the same part number, but Patriot changed the design. The biggest problem is that it is too big. It jams in several of the card readers I have including that in a primary laptop. It jams in my digital camcorder. These devices use a push to eject mechanism, and they don't eject. It really takes a lot of effort with really good fingernails to pry it out since the spring eject is not strong enough.
Further, they redesigned the insides. It is now about 2/3 of the speed previously--which is still very good, but obviously they changed the design and went to a cheaper MLC flash. Either that or Patriot sources these from multiple facilities, and I was just lucky. Before, I would wholeheartedly recommend this, but not any more.
Fast card that does about 16.5MB/s read throughput.
Worked immediately out of the box in my Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18 camera. It was able to see all 8GB with no formatting required. I am able to record 640x480 videos on at full 30fps with no skipped frames or other slowdowns. Definitely recommend this card for anyone looking at fast and reliable SDHC card. - Class 6 - Sd Card - Sdhc - 8gb'
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