Expansion: Cheap Class 6 or Good Class 4?

I'll probably order my Aone tomorrow and I'm thinking about what to stick in the expansion slot. I'm definitely looking for a 16gig card but I'm wondering if I want to take a risk on an A-data Class 6 card or go with a more reliable brand like PNY or SanDisk and settle for a Class 4.

Is the A-data worth the risk that I'll get one that should have been rejected in QC?

 

Don't know about the A-Datas they sell where you live, but my 16 GB class 6 A-Date has a lifetime warranty, so I'm not that much conserned about it's quality.

 

I've got PNY OPTIMA SDHC 16Gb CLASS 4 on my AA1 A110 LINPUS LITE and it work fine : read DivX / Xvid from card with VLC and fast forward up to 8x follows...

 

I can choose between a Kingston Class 6 (6MB/s minimal, maximal?) for S$42 or a Sandisk Ultra II Class 4 (Maximum 15MB/s) for S$53. Would the Kingston's maximum speed be around 15MB/s as well?

 

You seem to have the Classes mixed.


http://www.sdcard.org/about/speed_class/
Class 6 is fastest.

Class 2 Card: A speed of 2 MB/s or higher is guaranteed at the best fragmented state where no memory unit is occupied.
Class 4 Card: A speed of 4 MB/s or higher is guaranteed at the best fragmented state where no memory unit is occupied.
Class 6 Card: A speed of 6 MB/s or higher is guaranteed at the best fragmented state where no memory unit is occupied.

 

They don't actually. The Sandisk Ultra II's are class4 (as stated by Sandisk) but show 15MB/sec sustained read/write on the label.

Don't forget that the "Class" rating is a minimum guaranteed speed, not a maximum. Sandisk is rating conservatively so they can label their Extreme line Class 6. If they rated Ultra II class 6 as well, people would probably not buy the Extreme's as often (the "average" consumer, i'm talking about).

 

Buy this. I know I will.

 

As well, you have to consider the performance of the reader under the OS.

I have tested my panasonic 2GB SD Card in various readers. Using the AAO's storage slot, it was 11MB/sec read/write in XP. In vista, same card and driver set, it was 16MB write/23MB read. I didn't test under Linux.

I also did the same test with a kingston 4gb SDHC class 4. Under XP, it was around 6MB/sec read/write and 11/17 under Vista.

I can't really understand why the kingston didn't go to 11mb/sec like the Panasonic peaked at but those are the results obtained using ATTO disk benchmark.