REVIEW: SANDISK EXTREME 128GB

[grahamclarkphoto]

Does it hit the marketed throughput? No. What’s the actual formatted capacity? 128.83GB. More details below. Also, you can find more information on this review here: http://www.grahamclarkphoto.com/review-sandisk-extreme-128gb/

Use Cases
The SanDisk Extreme product line is second fastest in the lineup, with the Extreme Pro clocking in nearly twice that or perhaps more at 90-95MB of advertised I/O. That's nearly twice the speed! However, the Extreme Pro does not have a 128GB capacity, so this is the only option for hitting that capacity range at the moment. For 95% of all use cases involving shooting images from camera to card, the Extreme is above spec, including 30-minute HD1080p footage. Shooters who might have this card are:

• Casual Shooters
  Wildlife Photographers
  Wedding Photographers
  Landscape Photographers
  Action Sports Photographers
  Commercial Photographers
  Astrophotographers (and time-lapse photographers)
  Anyone doesn't to have more than one card

Speed
All speed tests were on run on a 2013 MacBook Air internal SD card slot (450/450mb SDD 6gb/s), which is an interface on the main logic board so it doesn't adversely affect the tests results. Here is a disk whack speedtest run on Blackmagic Disk Speed Test: https://vimeo.com/60428348

35.5MB write, and 37.8MB read speeds are a bit below the advertised 45MB/sec, but still good for nearly all types of shooters. The average SD card speed is roughly half this, where normal falls somewhere between 16-20MB/sec. A finder block copy transfer of 500MB had approximately +3 MB on read/write.

Formatted Capcity - 127.85GB

The actual camera formatted capacity of the SanDisk Extreme 128GB SDXC card is 127.85GB. Awesome!

Overall Impressions
For still shooters, the SanDisk Extreme 128GB SD card is now the last card you'll probably need for the next 3-5 years. If you shoot 30MB RAW files, you can shoot 4,369 RAW images until this card becomes full. If your RAW images are 50MB each, you'll max this one at 2,621 images. 80% of cameras fall under 30MB per RAW file. For video shooters, multiple 30-minute clips can be shot in sequence with just a short break in-between.

Wether you're going to be shooting stills or video, get the SanDisk Extreme 128GB over the Transcend 128GB SD TS128GS. It's only $30 more . For any capacities lower than 128GB, I recommend the Transcend as the price point as it's much less expensive and the speed/reliability is excellent.

If you have any questions or comments please don't hesitate to leave a comment below!

Graham

 

[Mt Spokane Photography]

The values you report are not those that most users will see, since they only apply to a new unused or freshly erased card with a UHS-1 compatible camera or card reader..

There are some gotchas!

1. If your camera does not support UHS-1, the card runs at half speed, due to the bus speed being slow.


2. The write times are also for a UHS-1 camera / reader with a erased card. Non UHS-1 cameras will halve the write speed.


3. Once a card has been fully written to, the write speed will drop to 10 mb/sec because it must first erase a block before writing to it. If you do a low level format, the faster speeds will return. This is important for users to understand, or they might be very unhappy.


That's why places like B&H report the minimum write speed, most users do not do low level formats on their cards, they just do a in camera format which does not erase the card.


The 128GB SDXC Memory Card Extreme Class 10 from SanDisk is a high-performance memory card. It improves upon the previous version's 30 MB/s max read / write speed by offering faster 45 MB/s performance. Minimum write speed is still 10 MB/s. These data rates get you ready for the next shot faster, and cut down on wait time when you're transferring your work from card to PC.


The large 128 GB memory provides ample storage space. Designed with the HD Video shooter in mind, this card won't give you lag time in between video clips, even at the highest resolution. Rated at UHS Speed Class 1 (U1) it has been created to provide optimized performance for 3D and Full HD (1080p) video recording as a UHS-I card.