Kingston MINI-SD Secure Digital 1024 MB

This is a review of the Kingston MINI-SD Secure Digital card, Kingston p/n SDM/1GB. The first picture above shows a blue "standard", not "mini" SD card and is a little misleading (thank you, Ciao)... the actual device under review is shown at the end of this review (or possibly as the second photo above if Ciao's photo selector is working).

***Geek warning: This review contains some seriously beep-bop technical guff, so if you are not of a technical bent, skip to the last 2 paragraphs, and photos, now! ***

One definition of a typical SD, or "Secure Digital", card: an attempt by some storage manufacturers to oust the more common disk drive, as a storage medium, from the ever-increasing plethora of hand-held devices that can store pictures, music, video, electronic files or e-mail... A primary argument for the widespread use of these cards is that, unlike disk drives, they contain no moving parts, and as such offer less lag or latency and consume less power. Very Green!

What's an SD card?
It's basically a collection of little circuits on a silicon chip, similar to the memory inside your desktop computer, in a handy, easy-to-carry (read "easy to lose"!) plastic case. Many cameras, PDAs (Palm Pilots, iPaqs, Treos and such like), MP3 players, even car stereo systems and printers, have a slot capable of accommodating an SD card. The card can also be plugged into an adapter, via the USB port (most PCs have at least one of these today!) of a PC, and is made to appear as a new "hard drive" on that PC. You can drag or copy files from it to your computer or vice-versa, then transport the SD card to another computer, or portable electronic device (camera, etc) and copy the files from the card to the second computer or device. Some of the more modern cards are cleverly designed with a hinge so that even the need for an adapter is removed.

I first encountered SD cards about 5 years ago, when a visiting VIP at work handed out one to me for helping him "get connected" in his hotel whilst he was visiting. He gave me a 64MB SanDisk standard SD card, slotted into a SanDisk "cruzer" USB-compatible clamshell-type carrier, or adapter, complete with a dinky little nylon clip-on "pocket" and a 5cm USB male-female tail to allow the bulky thing to be connected to the average recessed USB port on a laptop or PC. The card also fitted into my recently-acquired digital camera, conveniently enough - so gone were the days of hunting for the camera-to-PC cable for uploading my photos to my PC; just remove the card from the camera, slot it into the "cruzer", plug the cruzer into the USB port on the computer, and voilá! As an aside, earlier this year I bought a 1GB standard SD card, from another manufacturer, which didn't even need the carrier, but which could be plugged directly into the USB port on any computer via a very cleverly-worked hinge that flipped back to present the 4 contacts needed to slide into the USB port directly (shown in the last of my photos below).

At the time I was given my 64MB card, it was great - I could now "save and take that large-ish presentation I was working on home with me" (rather a cunning plan by our high-ranking visitor, I thought, later...!) should the need so arise, without having to resort to 3 or 4 floppy disks; the SD card had effectively eliminated the need to ever have to drop a floppy into my bag on the way out the door, home or office, ever again... Long live SneakerNet!

There are now many types, formats, sizes and makes of these memory cards, and the Kingston MINI SD card packs 1GB onto a piece of plastic no larger than a thumbnail! The mini SD is compatible with certain phones and cameras, and the micro SD, smaller yet, goes into even more devices.

What's in the Kingston card?
For a start, it's not the blue card that's shown at the top left of this review - the mini SD card is a lot smaller! Kingston's 1GB Mini SD card is described as " a small and lightweight memory card", which is "a great card for use in the latest mobile phones, digital cameras and other digital devices". That said, Kingston.com shows that their card ships with the mini-SD to standard SD (the format shown above) adapter included. If you want to see the difference between the formats, look at the pictures I attach below, which show the standard, micro and mini in comparison to a Treo device.

The Kingston MINI-SD Secure Digital card, Kingston p/n SDM/1GB, is described as "reliable" (well, they would, wouldn't they? I must admit, I haven't seen one fail in normal use yet, either!). With the use of the adapter (included in some packages along with the 1GB mini SD card for about £8), Kingston's Mini SD cards can be made into the size of a regular, standard, SD card in order to fit and function in card readers and SD compatible devices (like the "cruzer" mentioned earlier). The Mini-SD is resold in the UK by various suppliers: Insight.co.uk, dabs.com, PCWorld, ebuyer.com, stuff-uk.net, the list goes on...)

The mini SD is small at 21.5 mm x 20.0 mm x 1.4 mm. The Kingston device supports a sustained data transfer rate of 7.85 MB/sec on reads, with or without the adapter, and a 5.5 MB/sec write rate.

Kingston sell it with a lifetime warranty, which is typically offered by resellers in Europe (*except* for Germany, France and Austria!) and the "lifetime warranty" covers the product in the UK. Don't ask me what they determine to be "lifetime", it's doubtless covered by some form of weasel-words somewhere... However, should you feel so inclined to find out, "Kingston Technology Technical Support can be contacted by calling +44 (0) 1932 738888 or for national rate telephone numbers visit www.kingston.com/europe/contact."

Downsides - The only criticism I have seen of these cards relates to their use in Palm or similar devices/PCs, where it had to be formatted as a FAT32 device. Some laptops would not recognise the card using the laptop's own SD reader slot. However, using the "cruzer" or similar SD adapter and the laptop USB port gets over this problem.

So in brief: If you need one of these for a camera or other portable electronic device, try to buy one with the standard-sized SD adapter as well as the USB adapter to keep life simple when moving pictures off your camera onto your PC.

(c) pgn0 on ciao, November 2007.
(Two photos attached acknowledge the original source.)