Kingston Securedigital SD 256 256 MB

This year, Santa brought me my first digi-cam (see review). I was chuffed to bits, and was soon snapping away at anything that moved, and often things that didnt!

Now, as with many other models my camera came with only 16mb of in-built memory, and I was finding that the larger quality and resolution images just ate all of it up in one go, with me only being able to store 20 of the highest resolution pictures, and a pitiful 3 minutes ...
...to be the solution. Ever short of cash, I immediately hit the price comparison engines searching for the cheapest deal. My view was that with such an un-complicated and simple thing, going for the cheapest one shouldn’t have had much affect on quality. If you search really hard then you can find an unheard of brand SD card with 256 megabytes of memory for as little as £15. But this takes some hunting, and even with the most simple of gadgets, it ... more

This year, Santa brought me my first digi-cam (see review). I was chuffed to bits, and was soon snapping away at anything that moved, and often things that didnt!

Now, as with many other models my camera came with only 16mb of in-built memory, and I was finding that the larger quality and resolution images just ate all of it up in one go, with me only being able to store 20 of the highest resolution pictures, and a pitiful 3 minutes of video.

Obviously, an expansion card had to be the solution. Ever short of cash, I immediately hit the price comparison engines searching for the cheapest deal. My view was that with such an un-complicated and simple thing, going for the cheapest one shouldn’t have had much affect on quality. If you search really hard then you can find an unheard of brand SD card with 256 megabytes of memory for as little as £15. But this takes some hunting, and even with the most simple of gadgets, it can still go wrong. Therefore I decided to go for a brand that I had heard of, and always considered to be quality - Kingston.

I picked mine up for around £17 from a well-known online retailer, and it arrived promptly in the manufactures packaging, a bit of wrestling with the scissors and a few shards of plastic later, the card was freed - all 3cms of it! The card comes in a small plastic case so that it can be carried around without any damage or contamination from dirt, which is probably a good thing, as the card can feel flimsy and delicate at times. I’m sure the plastic is more than up to the job, but the thing is so small that you feel like a heavy hand could snap it in two.

Simplicity is the name of the game as far as design is concerned. As the cards have to fit in a range of devices the design choices faced would obviously be limited. The only interesting feature on the card is a small slider on the side that allows the card to be 'locked' so that it cannot be written onto.

Now down to the nitty gritty, what are you likely to gain from this card in terms of space?
The simple answer is - a lot. Like I said, with the cameras inbuilt memory, I could expect around 150 pictures using the standard quality. With the card slotted in (a simple process that even your dog could do) you should be snapping away until the 2000 mark has been reached. Video is now no longer limited to 3 minutes worth of footage. With the SD card in place, you can record well over an hour of useless tomfoolery, or store the perfect reminder of that dream holiday.

And don’t think it is limited to cameras - wherever there is a SD slot on an electrical device, you can use this card. It can even be used as a standalone form of personal storage, with the help of a card reader; data, pictures and all sorts of files can be carried around with you on something the size only slightly bigger than a 2p coin.

All in all, you really can’t argue with Kingston’s offering to the middle market of memory cards. Its cheap, easy to use and will boost the capacity of many devices many times over, and you can’t argue with that! 

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