In summary
A fast, portable reader for the latest high-speed CF and SD memory cards.We’ve been using Lexar’s Professional UDMA dual slot memory card reader for a few months and have been very impressed by its compact size, sensible design and operational efficiency. With a 72 x 65 mm footprint and a weight of just under 67 grams, it’s small enough to pack into a laptop bag and takes up very little desk space, making it ideal for photographers who work in the studio and/or on location. . . [more]
Full review
We’ve been using Lexar’s Professional UDMA dual slot memory card reader for a few months and have been very impressed by its compact size, sensible design and operational efficiency. With a 72 x 65 mm footprint and a weight of just under 67 grams, it’s small enough to pack into a laptop bag and takes up very little desk space, making it ideal for photographers who work in the studio and/or on location.
Designed to complement the latest UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) CF cards as well as the Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) standard, it has two card slots in a mounting that pops up when you gently squeeze the recessed buttons on the side panels and both cards can be accessed simultaneously. After the cards have been removed, the top panel folds down to prevent dust and other contaminants from entering the card slots.
A mini USB jack on the rear panel provides connection to a computer via the supplied USB cable, which has mini to full-size USB plugs. On the base of the reader is a rubber-like rectangle that stops it from sliding across the desktop.
Performance
We timed the transfer of a folder containing 955MB of image files from the Lexar Professional UDMA reader to a Windows PC with a Pentium D 3.00GHz chip and 3.25GB of RAM. Although our computer was fairly slow, it allowed us to compare transfer times with cards of various speeds. The results are shown in the table below.
|
Memory card |
Transfer time |
|
Lexar Professional 133x 2GB CF |
32.95 seconds |
|
Lexar Professional 300x 2GB CF |
27.74 seconds |
|
SanDisk Extreme III 1GB CF |
33.43 seconds |
|
SanDisk Exteme IV 4GB CF |
30.49 seconds |
|
Sony 133x CF 2GB CF |
28.37 seconds |
|
ATP Pro Max II UDMA 4GB CF |
28.07 seconds |
|
ATP ProMax 4GB SDHC |
29.30 seconds |
|
Panasonic Pro High Speed 1GB SD |
29.33 seconds |
|
Verbatim Premium 4GB SDHC |
28.67 seconds |
The top write speed of a 300x card is 45MB per second and our tests produces a transfer speed of 34.43MB/second for this reader with the Lexar Professional 300x 2GB CF card. Interestingly, in normal usage, the top speed rating is seldom achieved so it is reassuring to know that even with cards that have lower speed ratings, the Lexar Professional UDMA reader is capable of transfer speeds that exceed than 28MB/second, making it one of the fastest readers on the current market.
Specifications
Interfaces: UDMA & standard CompactFlash, Secure Digital (SD) and SDHC
System requirements: Windows 2000/XP/Vista; Mac OS 10.3.9 or later
Certifications: FCC, VCCI, CE, C-tick
Dimensions: Approx. 72 x 65 x 22 mm
Weight: Approx. 66.8 g
RRP: $49.95
Distributors: WestGroup (1300 130 578) and Ingram Micro (1300 651 124)
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