Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to tell whether certain USB flash drives or memory cards were faster than others just by looking at them? The SD association (the folks who oversee the specs for SD cards) certainly think so, and they’re rolling out a little change to help clear things up.

The new UHS-I specification and associated branding tells you that a card is “capable of supporting data transfer speeds up to 104 Megabytes per second.” Their press release later adds, The new high-speed symbols are designed to make it easier for consumers to take advantage of the massive storage and incredible speeds offered in SDXC and SDHC products.

As Engadget points out, the “up to” is a bit of an odd choice. Wouldn’t it be a good idea to let us know these cards don’t just have a higher theoretical top speed but also better average throughput?

Interesting side note from the release: the association states that there are more than 2.5 billion SD cards on the market today. I wonder how many of those have been through the was in a pair of pants at least once…

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Lee Mathews

Computer tech, blogger, husband, father, and avid MSI U100 user.

2 replies on “SD Association unveils faster UHS-I spec for SDHC and SDXC cards”

  1. Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some way to tell whether certain USB flash drives or memory cards were faster than others just by looking at them?

    … There is, isn’t there? It’s the class (X) of the card. …

  2. I do not think there can be any hard and fast rule on the average expectations.

    It could be based on a number of reasons, for example the size of different files do contribute on the speed of the system. Most netbook users run applications right from their SDHC so each product could actually give a different rating.

    It’s true that we wouldn’t be able to get to the theoretical value but it should be near around. I do not completely agree to statement as many class did not match to the theory.

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