OCZ Secure Digital Dual Memory Card Review

Written by Maxit

Price: ï¿½35
Manufactuer: OCZ Technology
Supplier: OCZ Technology

Chances are if you have a digital camera, MP3 player, PDA, GPS or some such gadget, you'll have the need for SD memory cards. It's one of the most popular formats for data storage. Now if you've messed around with SD cards (that's Secure Digital not Snoop Dog) before you'll have found the need for a USB cable or some card reader device to transfer data back and forth. Bit of a pain really. Well the clever boffins at OCZ have come up with a fantastic solution to take out the hassle of whole process. The OCZ Secure Digital Dual cards offer a high performance SD card and USB drive in one sweet device. Brilliant.

OCZ Secure Digital SD card review

Better yet it's USB 2.0 for ultra fast performance. So how does it work? OCZ SD Dual appears to be an average flash card at first glance but with a quick removal of the protective cover, the card is ready to plug directly into any USB port.

OCZ SD

OCZ 2GB SD Card

How damn clever is that! The SD card comes in 1GB and 2GB flavours with speeds up to 133x. OCZ sent us the 80x version with a transfer rate of 12MB/s. Fast enough to make file transfer a pleasure rather than a chore. We recorded HD-Tach burst speeds of 14.4MB/s and a random access time of 7ms. Faster than specification. In real life we copied a 700meg file across in Windows Vista in a little under 2 minutes with Vista reporting a transfer speed of 7mb/s.

OCZ offer their usual lifetime warranty making this SD card just as attractive as the rest of their product range. To give you an idea of how many pictures you can store on a 2GB card OCZ include a handy table on the back of the packaging. With a 6 megapixel camera and an average file size of 3.2MB you could store a whopping 645 images. Actual numbers depend on the camera model, resolution and compression setting. On our Canon IXUS 700 digital camera at 3072 x 2304 superfine settings it reckoned the SD card had enough room for 638 shots. That's more than enough for any Globe Trotter.

The Bottom Line

The OCZ Secure Digital Dual SD is a class act. It's so good having the ability to use USB 2.0 to transfer files that once you've tried it we are quite sure you'll never want any other SD card again. No more messy USB cables, camera drivers or add-on card readers. Slot this into your gadget and then plug it straight into the USB port on your computer. Brilliant. The lifetime warranty, low cost and fast reliable performance make the OCZ Secure Digital cards a must have purchase for all your favourite digital devices. Nice one OCZ!