Performance

The performance of SDHC memory cards can vary greatly, both when it comes to read and write speeds. The PQI 8 GB Class 6 card I received for testing is labeled as Class 6 because it is able to achieve a sustainable write speed across the entire storage area of 6 MB/s. The Class-system is only meant to provide you an idea of how the card performs and leaves out certain important performance aspects such as read speeds and random access time. The PQI card proved tricky to test, at first it would not work with my ordinary SanDisk reader which is odd since it is the only reader I have had that could handle every SDHC card I could throw at until now, the trick turned out to be a 6 in 1 card reader made by Hama which is bigger and bulkier than the SanDisk reader and with a possible more complex interior design. As with the SanDisk card reader the Hama reader did not bottleneck the performance of the cards I tested on it.


HDTach unveils that this card is right up there with the best SDHC cards and it proves that this card is made to perform. The read speed is on par with that of the SanDisk 8 GB Class 6 SDHC card with the same random access time. The performance is good across the storage area of the card, no major dips.


In the ATTO benchmark this card yields a greater than 6 MB/s write speed at the bigger block sizes which is very good. To be honest I was not expecting this cheap class 6 card to exceed its speed classification, but that is exactly what the PQI card has done, even though it was by a small margin.


The HDTach average read speed tests reveal no surprise, this card is almost as fast as the other cards tested.


Random access time of the PQI card is pretty much average for an 8 GB card.


The difference in burst read speed between the four cards in question is negligible.


In the ATTO test the PQI card pulls ahead of the Lexar class 2 card in read speed. In all the other tests the read speed achieved with the PQI card was slightly lower than that of the Lexar class 2 card.


When it comes to write speeds the PQI Class 6 just manages to squeeze ahead of the Lexar card. In all fairness the PQI card is much faster at the smaller block levels than the Lexar card, but at large block sizes the difference is not that big.