08-22-2006, 04:17 AM
Almost all SD cards (and all memory cards), especially the brands like "Patriot", "PNY" and so forth are not "real" brands at all.
They are comprised of components bid upon and purchased at lowest market prices from various wholesale sources, then assembled in Chinese factories and a label stuck on. PNY, Kingston, aData, Patriot, they mean nothing. The label is the name of the aggregator.
Cards assembled on the same day might have one batch with Toshiba flash memory, another batch with Samsung.
Even Sandisk and the other top brands have wildly different components in the same model depending on the day it was assembled.
What the brand names MIGHT represent are varying levels of quality control and/or acceptance of out-of-tolerance chips, though I doubt even this makes much of a difference.
If you like the specs, and the vendor allows returns for out of the box defective, buy the cheapest you can find and forget the brand name.
They are comprised of components bid upon and purchased at lowest market prices from various wholesale sources, then assembled in Chinese factories and a label stuck on. PNY, Kingston, aData, Patriot, they mean nothing. The label is the name of the aggregator.
Cards assembled on the same day might have one batch with Toshiba flash memory, another batch with Samsung.
Even Sandisk and the other top brands have wildly different components in the same model depending on the day it was assembled.
What the brand names MIGHT represent are varying levels of quality control and/or acceptance of out-of-tolerance chips, though I doubt even this makes much of a difference.
If you like the specs, and the vendor allows returns for out of the box defective, buy the cheapest you can find and forget the brand name.