noangels's Full Review: SanDisk Ultra® II 60x (1 GB) SD Card (SDSDPH-...
I purchased this memory card for my Canon Powershot Elph SD 600 and another for my mother's Kodak Easyshare Z730. This is my card of choice and I feel it should be the card of choice for most people.
Memory Card Type
The Secure Digital (SD) Card type is the most widely used of all of the cards. Kodak, Nikon, Dell, Gateway, Panasonic, Hewlett-Packard, and current Canon cameras all use these memory cards. It is also widely used in PDA's, GPS Systems, MP3 Players, and mobile phones. It is the easiest format to find and one of the cheapest.
Price
Since SD memory cards are the most widely used, they are the most frequently discounted cards. There is usually a weekly sale on them at most electronics stores. Ultra II cards tend to run $10 above the standard cards at each storage level. For example, at Best Buy, the standard 1 gigabyte card price is $79.99 and the Ultra II card is $89.99 for the 1 gigabyte.
Why Ultra II?
Ultra II cards have a minimum sustained write speed of 9MB/second and a read speed of 10MB/second. These cards write three times faster than standard cards. This reduces time the camera takes to write the picture to the card, decreasing the time between pictures tremendously. This is especially helpful when photographing children, pets, or sports. I've also found it to be very helpful when using any kind of burst mode (continuous shooting). The faster read time is helpful when reviewing pictures on your camera, transferring them to your computer, or viewing them. Printers also read the card faster. I use an Epson Picturemate to print my photos and the photos are displayed on the screen much faster when I use an Ultra II card. I was really impressed to see what a difference there really was between the two types of cards. I now buy only high speed cards.
I use these cards mostly with cameras but there are benefits for other uses as well. On MP3 players it should decrease the time between songs and decrease the time it takes to put your music on the card. On a GPS, maps should be stored and read quicker. On a mobile phone, information such as ringtones, song files, and pictures, is accessed more quickly. The same goes for PDAs.
Storage
This card stores 1 gigabyte (1024 megabytes) of pictures. How many pictures that equates to depends on the camera itself. On average, 1 gigabyte holds 512 images on a 4 megapixel camera. The compression, megapixels, and settings all affect the size of the picture and therefore how many can be stored. If you have a 5 megapixel camera and you have the compression set very high and reduce the megapixels to 2 megapixels you will get almost double the pictures you would have gotten at highest quality and lowest compression. Kodak cameras have very high compression so you will see these cameras can store more images on this card than other cameras. My Mom's 5 megapixel Z730 holds 681 pictures on this card at the highest quality and lowest compression. My 6 megapixel SD 600 holds 331 images at the highest quality and lowest compression. Pictures on a PDA or phone will also vary in maximum number as it depends on the quality and size of each image.
Songs average about 4 megabytes each, but vary depending on length and quality of audio. A 1 gigabyte card will store about 256 songs. Video from a digital camera will average a little over an hour on a 1 gigabyte card. This amount of storage is what I recommend for most people. When you buy a memory card for a camera, you want something that will hold enough pictures to last your most camera-hungry vacation. You never want to buy a memory card in an airport where they are often $30-$40 overpriced (we actually have dealers come into our store when cards are on sale to buy them for this purpose). It's never a bad thing to have more memory than you need so I recommend that everyone have at least 1 gigabyte.
Durability
Not that I recommend beating them up, but these cards are durable. I have so many of them laying around that they are bound to get dropped or tossed around from time to time. They are meant to be able to take a shock from a 10 ft drop. I haven't dropped any that far but it should be ok.
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