Following on from my Raspberry Pi SD Card benchmark I happen to now be the owner of both the Transcend Class 10 16GB SDHC Card and the SanDisk Extreme (Class 10) 32GB SDHC Card.
I thought I’d informally benchmark them both given that they are of the same class but SanDisk is allegedly a more ‘reputable’ brand. I used AJA System Test on my Mid-2011 MacBook Air using the internal SD Card slot. Here is the table of results:
| Card | Write Speed | Read Speed |
|---|---|---|
| Transcend Class 10 16GB SDHC Card | 13.7 MB/s | 20.1 MB/s |
| SanDisk Extreme (Class 10) 32GB SDHC Card | 23.8 MB/s | 34.2 MB/s |
And here are the graphs:
Transcend Class 10 16GB SDHC Card
SanDisk Extreme (Class 10) 32GB SDHC Card
It’s interesting to see that despite both cards being the same class, the SanDisk does come out on top, though does not perform up to the 45MB/s they claim. This could be down to file system performance or performance of the internal SD card slot, or just false advertising.
If you’re buying for a Raspberry Pi, it probably won’t matter what card you get. However if you’re buying for a digital camera or camcorder, you’d be better off going with the SanDisk Extreme. Even the 16GB SanDisk Extreme is only £3 more on Amazon.