Lexar USB 3 Reader: Dual-Slot vs 25-in-1

[dolina]

Lexar has two USB 3 card readers the Dual-Slot (LRW307URBNA) and the 25-in-1 (LRW025URBNA).

What's the difference between the two other than the price, color and how many cards they an read?

[dr croubie]

the price, color and how many cards they can read?

That's pretty much it.
I've got the Transcend TS-RDF8K, that works good too.
I don't think you'll find much performance difference between any models these days (if you're the kind of person who needs to shave 5% off the time it takes to transfer your photos then there's something wrong with your workflow).

[Mt Spokane Photography]

 
Get the Dual Slot that handles UDMA 7 and SD UHS-1.
Lexar® Professional USB 3.0 Dual-Slot ReaderSuperSpeed USB 3.0 reader for professional photographers and videographers—now with UDMA 7 support.
The Lexar® Professional USB 3.0 Dual-Slot Reader is a professional-level, portable USB reader that provides maximum high-speed file transfer, with a blazing-fast USB interface speed up to 500MB/s. This lets you leverage the performance capabilities of the latest UDMA CompactFlash® (including UDMA 7), SDXC™, and SD UHS-I (SD 3.0) memory cards.

[pwp]

My first USB-3 CF reader was the Lexar dual slot. It was unstable as hell, often being invisible to the system, or slowing inexplicably to USB-2 speeds and simply not recognizing three of my 2 year old Sandisk cards. A colleague had similar issues and both readers are now landfill.

Next I got the Sandisk Image Mate. http://www.sandisk.com.au/products/readers-accessories/imagemate-all-in-one-usb-30-reader/ which thankfully can be detached from its bizarre looking stand. It's been 100% stable and blindingly fast. The new 32Gb Lexar 1000x cards scream down in 30 seconds less than no time.

However there is an issue with this very compact piece of hardware. The "throat" of the reader where you insert the CF card is very shallow, and the CF card is not always guided directly onto the gold pins. I have bent pins in the reader on half a dozen occasions. It's easily straightened with a very fine jewelers screwdriver, but it's far from an ideal situation.

Still on the lookout for the perfect USB-3 reader....

-PW   

[Mt Spokane Photography]

My first USB-3 CF reader was the Lexar dual slot. It was unstable as hell, often being invisible to the system, or slowing inexplicably to USB-2 speeds and simply not recognizing three of my 2 year old Sandisk cards. A colleague had similar issues and both readers are now landfill.

Next I got the Sandisk Image Mate. http://www.sandisk.com.au/products/readers-accessories/imagemate-all-in-one-usb-30-reader/ which thankfully can be detached from its bizarre looking stand. It's been 100% stable and blindingly fast. The new 32Gb Lexar 1000x cards scream down in 30 seconds less than no time.

However there is an issue with this very compact piece of hardware. The "throat" of the reader where you insert the CF card is very shallow, and the CF card is not always guided directly onto the gold pins. I have bent pins in the reader on half a dozen occasions. It's easily straightened with a very fine jewelers screwdriver, but it's far from an ideal situation.

Still on the lookout for the perfect USB-3 reader....

-PW

I've been happy with my Lexar dual card reader, never a problem.  It is possible to get bad ones, I'm sure. They typically all use the same electronics.
 
I've seen card readers with misaligned slots and connectors due to poor assembly.  They quickly get bent pins.  You can spot it by looking in the reader if you know what to look for.  If you get one, return it or toss it.

[pwp]

My first USB-3 CF reader was the Lexar dual slot. It was unstable as hell, often being invisible to the system, or slowing inexplicably to USB-2 speeds and simply not recognizing three of my 2 year old Sandisk cards. A colleague had similar issues and both readers are now landfill.

Still on the lookout for the perfect USB-3 reader....

-PW

I've been happy with my Lexar dual card reader, never a problem.  It is possible to get bad ones, I'm sure. They typically all use the same electronics.
 
I've seen card readers with misaligned slots and connectors due to poor assembly.  They quickly get bent pins.  You can spot it by looking in the reader if you know what to look for.  If you get one, return it or toss it.

We had two bad Lexars. But a little more research has suggested that the compatibility issues may go back to the early build USB3 controller on the board of my PC. I built this PC quite early in the life of USB3. Hopefully our issues were somewhat isolated bad luck. Glad to hear yours has been stable.

-PW

[DB]

I use a really cheap BELKIN multiple card reader (CF, SmartMedia, xD, SD, MMC, mini-SD, MS, MS-Duo, M2 and Micro-SD) and it cost less than 20 euro and transfers @ up to 60 MB/s as it is USB 2.0, but do any of you guys really need 500 MB/s? I mean load up a 16 GB CF card and go for a coffee, come back in 3 or 4 mins and you're done.

[dolina]

Lexar released a firmware update for their Lexar Professional USB3.0 Dual-Slot Reader that can be found at http://www.lexar.com/downloads

It should solve all the problems mentioned on the thread.

DB,

USB 2 limits cards like the Lexar 1000x to 36.7MB/s while USB 3 allows it to hit 129.2MB/s.



Source: http://www.robgalbraith.com/bins/content_page.asp?cid=7-11673-12268

With technologies like USB 3 and SATA 6Gb/s SSD allows memory cards to have reads and writes of 500MB/s possible. Today's cards cannot do this but when they become available having a fast USB 3 card reader will help a ton.

Right now I am using 32GB CF cards and once 64GB cards reach $120 I will be getting those. So waiting for 30-60 minutes because the sole bottleneck is the reader isn't really that great.

[DB]

@ dolina   Thanks, that is useful info that you provided, basically USB 3.0 card readers are 3x faster than USB 2.0. Just checked on eBay and the Lexar Professional USB 3.0 Dual Slot Reader is only 27 EUR or about $40 which is very cheap given the extra bang you get for your buck. (I have USB 3.0 ext drives, but I'm going to get one of these Lexar CF/SD card readers now).

[dolina]

DB,

The computer used for the test probably had a stock HDD that caused the card to bottleneck at 129.2MB/s. One can argue that when used with a SATA 6Gb/s SSD a Lexar 1000x will hit the ceiling of 150MB/s.

1x = .15MB/s

Furthermore the card reader is stated to be UDMA 7-compliant. In the coming months CF cards with read/writes of 167MB/s will be sold. After that CF cards may move from PATA to SATA 3Gb/s (300MB/s), SATA 6Gb/s (600MB/s) so on and so forth.

SATA 6Gb/s SSDs are coming down in price already breaking $1/GB barrier. Hopefully in the near future SSDs will match the prices of more traditional HDDs allowing it to be a more mainstream product. As it stands there are only two companies left that manufactures HDDs in significant volumes and these are Western Digital (that bought Hitatchi this year) and Seagate. These two companies have the technology to make 5TB 3.5-inch internal desktop drives but have yet done so. My guess is they're worried about SSD.