Review: Lexar Professional UDMA USB Card Reader

One of the items that some photographers might over look are the faster card readers. Depending on what camera equipment you use to capture your images with, the file sizes of those photos are starting to get larger and larger. I don’t know about you, but with my current camera body (Canon EOS 7D) my RAW files are roughly 22MB in file size. Take into account I can easily shoot 1,000 photos during a single day event and that is a lot of information to pass between your camera and your computer. You’ll probably want to do it as quickly as possible, right?

Typically there are two ways of retrieving your recently captured images from your camera; connecting your camera directly to your computer to download them, or to remove the memory card and use a memory card reader to download them. Typically the Camera to Computer approach is alright, but not the quickest. You can also save wear and tear on your memory card (if you rarely swap it out) but then usually drain your battery when you have it connected to your computer for download.

The approach I prefer (as do most photographers) is the use of a memory card reader. A small electronic device that you can plug your memory cards into and have them download your images to your computer. They are also great when you have multiple memory cards to read from, I myself have two 16 GB Compact Flash cards, one 8 GB Compact Flash card and one 16 GB SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) card. You also typically get faster read speeds with a stand alone memory card reader than you would by plugging in your digital camera.

In the past I have used various memory card readers, typically ones that were for specific types of cards. I had one card strictly for Compact Flash, another one for SD and SDHC cards. Robyn even has a nice portable, USB SD and SDHC memory card reader which I’ve used plenty of times. Though with the recent upgrade to a higher end camera, I also got into the higher end memory cards too. The Compact Flash cards I have are both UDMA (Ultra Direct Memory Access) capable and offer read/write speeds up to 60 MB/second. Yes, in the world of camera gear, your memory cards can play an important role, especially when capturing fast action events.

Lexar Professional UDMA USB Memory Card Reader

When I was looking around for the fastest memory card reader I came across a couple from Lexar, both which are in their Professional line up memory products. Their fastest memory card reader uses the Firewire interface (both 400 and 800), the next one down, the one I wanted, is of the USB 2.0 variety. USB 2.0 is not as fast as Firewire 800 and a bit behind Firewire 400, but it is faster then any other memory card reader I have tried or looked at.

USB 2.0 has an effective data transfer rate of about 40 MB/second, whereas Firewire 400 is relatively the same speed perhaps a bit faster, but Firewire 800 can offer speeds up to 100MB/second. With that being said, my 60MB/second Compact Flash cards won’t truly shine in their read/write speeds with the USB 2.0 Lexar memory card reader but that’s alright, the memory cards shine when it comes to the frame rate on my Canon 7D.

The USB 2.0 memory card reader handles both Compact Flash memory as well as Secure Digital (and SDHC) memory and at the same time. This little device replaced two other devices I was currently using.

First Impressions

First impressions are always the most important right? When I first saw Keith using his Lexar dual-slot memory card reader, I made note of the size. It isn’t much larger than the Compact Flash cards it reads itself. You can even click it closed when not in use which makes this little unit half the height when in operation. The cool thing I liked, right off the bat, was that it supported both Compact Flash and SD (or SDHC). I use both these memory types as one is used with my Canon 7D and the other is used with my canon XSi (EOS 450D).

When you have both memory cards inserted they will both show up separately (in Windows anyway) as stand alone drives. This allows the easy use of retrieving your data off of them, but also writing back to them if you need to simultaneously.

You can, of course, still use them independently if you need to.

Performance

Granted with the memory cards I currently own, various factors can come into play when you are testing the read/write speeds of such a little device. My Compact Flash cards are of the 60MB/second type so with USB 2.0, I should theoretically only reach about 40MB/second, which isn’t their fastest rated speed. Other factors such as read/write speed of the hard drive they are being written too can also change the result. In this case I am using HD-Tune to check out how fast I can read/write to one of my 16 GB Compact Flash card.

Compact Flash

The Compact Flash cards, as I have mentioned, are of the 60MB/second UDMA types with a capacity of 16 GB. Though i do have one that is 8GB and is of a slower rate.

It is nice to see a decent sustained transfer rate averaging at about 24.3 MB/second, about one third of what the actual memory card is rated to be able to do. Though it is faster than from reading directly from the camera, at least that is what my observations are when I did import to Lightroom via the USB cable attached to my Canon 7D.

SDHC

The SDHC or Secure Digital High Capacity card I have is that of a Class 4 specification. This means that it is guaranteed to be able to do a minimum of 4 MB/second in transferring data.

With running HD-Tune, I was able to sustain an average of 12.7 MB/second, which isn’t that bad, but of course it is not nearly as good as the UDMA Compact Flash card. The SDHC card I have was fairly inexpensive, which is also probably why I get a lot of BUFFER FULL messages when I shoot in Continuous Mode on my Canon XSi. I have missed many a great shot with that camera and memory card.

Thoughts and Conclusions

I am really happy with the Lexar Professional Dual-Slot UDMA USB reader. Not only does it allow me to easily load multiple memory cards into Lightroom for the post-process portion of my workflow, it also allowed me to replace two existing memory card readers that read specific types of memory cards. Now I just use 1 device for all of my digital cameras!

The design of the card reader is also fairly minimal (which I like). It fit easily into my camera bag without taking up needed room when I was in Whistler for the Telus World Ski and Snowboard Festival. It is nice to also be able to click it closed when not in use, or when moving it around in a bag. The rubber around the edges of the bottom allow it to not slide around on whatever surface you place it on either.

Yes, it technically isn’t able to reach transfer speeds for the higher-end memory cards out on today’s market, but it does a decent job for those who don’t have access to Firewire 400 or 800 ports. Currently the fastest memory cards on the market can reach up to speeds of 90MB/second, and then the ones I have are 60MB/second, though that’s mainly for use in digital cameras who require a fast form of media for high frame rate shooting, or doing 1080p video.

When transferring files from the memory card to the computer that are roughly 22MB each, it can take a while to download 1,000 or so images. The reader helps pick up the pace, which means I have to wait less time when wanting to edit the photos to get them to their respective clients or on the web to share with the world.

Some people might shy away from a card reader such as this thinking they don’t need it and the cheapo $10 reader would do just fine, yes this card reader (at the time of this post) is retailing for about $60, but is is worth the price. If you’re shooting with professional cameras with professional grade memory cards, you will definitely see a speed increase (in regards to transfers between memory and computer) if you go with an UDMA capable reader such as this Lexar dual-slot reader.

If you do have a Firewire enabled computer I would recommend checking out the line of Firewire card readers by Lexar. I believe Macs do come standard with one Firewire 400 port, I know even my Windows-based computer has one. If you do not have a Firewire port then I do highly-recommend the USB 2.0 Dual-Slot memory card reader. I went with the USB dual-slot device so I can use it between the 3 windows-based computers we have here at home.

Pros

• Reads both Compact Flash and SD (or SDHC)
• Small size and footprint
• UDMA capable

Cons

• Max transfer speed of 40MB/second as specified with USB2.0 specs