Sorry if this has been answered. I did a search and couldn't find a clear answer.

I'm expecting shipment of a K5 shortly. What SDHC card should I get?

I understand that Class 10 is recommended, but what read speed? 20MB/S? 30MB/S? And does it make much difference in terms of burst speed or video shooting?

My plan was to get a couple 16GB - 20mb/s cards.

Thanks.

[JimD]

Got my K5 from a main dealer on Saturday. I asked for their advice and came away with a ScanDisk Extreme Pro - upto 40MB/s . 300x. (that's what it says on the box)

It also says Waterproof, Temperature proof, Shockproof and X-ray proof. I hope it doesn't catch any nasty diseases then.

[rfortson]

Well, I buy memory based largely on price. I found this one at my local Fry's for about the same price as Newegg.

Newegg.com - WINTEC FileMate 16GB Professional Class 10 Secure Digital SDHC Card

Newegg also had many positive reviews about it, so I went with it. Have only shot a couple of bursts with it (no video yet), but seems good to me.

[srt6xfire]

From my research, which wasn't conclusive, I thought it was best to go with the Sandisk HD Video class 10 30 mb/sec. I think I could have probably gotten away using a Lexar Pro, but didn't want to cut any corners.

This is just the conclusion I reached based on reading through threads and checking on reading and writings speeds by various people/forums

---

Last edited by srt6xfire; 04-19-2011 at 01:39 PM.

[dperreno]

You can't go wrong with the Sandisk Extreme series, but they are a bit pricey. I've been using PQI Class 10 cards which you can pick up from Meritline pretty cheap and I've been very happy. As a matter of fact, I just received my new K-5 last night, and I just ordered a 16 Gb PQI card for it today (my 2 Gb card will only hold 44 images in Raw!)

I'm looking at some Transcend Class 10 cards. I understand they are rated at about 17mb/s and don't work as fast as the Sandisk, Panasonic etc but they are a half to a quarter of the price and seem to have as good a warranty and reviews from people. But it seems that the hard core dslr users are looking for speed.

[illdefined]

Got my K5 from a main dealer on Saturday. I asked for their advice and came away with a ScanDisk Extreme Pro - upto 40MB/s . 300x. (that's what it says on the box)

It also says Waterproof, Temperature proof, Shockproof and X-ray proof. I hope it doesn't catch any nasty diseases then.

that 40MB/s listed on the Sandisk is to the UHS-1 standard which none of the current Pentax cameras support. Pentax only currently support SDHC (which is backward compatible from UHS-1)

I recently did a test on my K5 with a Class 6 Eye-Fi card vs. a Class 10 Sandisk Pro, anecdotally the Class 6 card seemed slightly faster.

I just ordered three 8GB Transcend Class 10 cards from Amazon for a total of 45 bucks. Lots of dslr users seem happy with them for both burst and video response. About 500 reviews and mostly highly positive. I'll report back what I find!

[Ahab]

I have the 8gb class 10's and recently purchased a Sandisk Extreme. I can't tell the difference in speed.

[JohnBee]

There was a time when I used to use Sandisk Extremes just because they ranked the highest in data read and writes. However, since the announcement of class 10 cards, I've begun using Lexar SDHC and finally Silicon Power cards.

The most affordable of the cards are Silicon Power which can be had: 32GB for aprox $70.00 USD on eBay. And based on my own tests are every bit as fast as my fastest Sandisk card which was not only smaller but cost significantly more.

Approximately $70.35 + shipping

Pros: as fast as Sandisk Extreme on K-5


Hope this helps...

[bar]

Like Russ, I bought the WINTEC FileMate 16GB Professional Class 10 card based on good reviews. Rated at 10 MB/sec or better for read & write -- that's the basic Class 10 definition.

I also have the SanDisk Extreme Pro 16GB UHS Speed Class 1 card. Of course the K-5 can't use UHS speed. This card is rated at 45 MB/sec for read & write (300x).

Both have a Limited Lifetime Warranty, although SanDisk says it's a 30 year warranty in Germany. But for those of you who remember floppy drives, their "Lifetime Warranty" was for the lifetime of the product -- not the buyer's lifetime.

With new empty cards I ran a simple speed test on both: filled up the K-5 buffer with continuous RAW images, then clocked the complete write cycle. The results were identical.

So it's clear to me the camera can't take advantage of the more expensive SanDisk Extreme Pro card when flushing the buffer. I didn't test image playback. Not too concerned with read speeds.

But not all Class 10 cards are created equal -- Class 10 only specifies a minimum speed for read & write operations. I plan to buy a cheaper Class 10 card in a couple weeks to compare.

SanDisk does say it has increased endurance through wear leveling. Wear leveling is important since flash devices can only write/delete memory blocks so many times before they are unable to store new data. I understand reading doesn't contribute to wear and you can read data from flash devices even when it won't accept new data.

I'll leave it to someone else to test wear leveling on these cards.

[LH_NY]

I use an A-Data Class 10 16GB. ATTO test maxes out around 16+MB/s write and 19+MB/s read. Got it from Newegg back when it was $22. Now up to $26. Visually looks identical to the Class 10 8gb but that one clocks in at 11MB/s write. Tested some 1080p records with 16GB and no issues so far.

Haven't done too much burst shooting - at least not to the point of filling the camera buffer.

[WildCard]

Tried a 8 GB Sandisk Extreme Class 10 (30 MB/s) card recently.
Definite improvement in read/write times compared to my slower Class-4 cards.

But I do not have a chance to try out any other Class 10 cards yet.

I've heard that the K-5 write speed is limited to 30~ MB/s. So felt kinda pointless to get a Extreme Pro 45 MB/s card for double the price.

[Smeggypants]

I use class 10 Integral Ultima pro 16GB cards. £17 each , which is about $25.

I've got a few of them now. Never had a problem

[bobmaxja]

TRanscend for me class 10. Flash memory is made by few company