SD cards are probably the most popular format of memory cards right now, you can get them in varying sizes and speeds and prices. When you take a lot of pictures you need a good, reliable and fast card, and we all know that not all are created equal as some are much better than others. ATP is a company that makes memory cards that are some of the best out there in both performance and build quality, their cards can withstand extreme temperatures and they’re built to last.
Today for review I’ve got the ATP ProMax II 4gb SD/SDHC memory Card, it’s one of the fastest on the market today with a class rating of 6, with a claim of 22.8MB/s transfer rate. Is it that fast? Well that’s what we aim to find out.
No video for you today… it’s just an SD card after all. The ATP ProMax II card comes in an easy open plastic clamshell style case. You can plainly see the card through the front along with specs and features as well listed on the front and back.
The card comes in your standard plastic case.
It’s bright purplish colored label makes it stand out a bit, and since it’s a secure card it has the little lock on the side as well.
Specifications:
Targetting professional and high end enthusiast photographers, the ProMaxII SD/SDHC card line up represents the ultimate in performance and reliability. By utilizing best in industry components together with ATP tuned configurations, ProMaxII cards are specifically made for those users looking for the fastest write transfer speeds available. All ProMaxII cards are rated at Class6, but allow for write transfer speeds at up to 20MB/sec, maximizing the potential for DSLR cameras and HD camcorders. ProMaxII cards are also all built with ATP SIP technology, allowing for water, ESD, and dustproof durability
ATP Part Number: AF4GSDP2
Transfer Speed
Up to 22.5MB/sec Read Speed
Up to 20MB/sec Write Speed
Class 6
Durability
Waterproof: Yes
Dust Proof: Yes
ESD Proof: Yes
Extreme Temp: Yes
Vibration: 15Gs peak-to-peak Max
Shock: 1000G
Reliability
MTBF (mean time between failures): 1,000,000 hours
Number of insertions: 10,000 minimum
Data retention: 10 years
Endurance: >100,000 cycles (read/write and erase)
Physical characteristics
Protected Switch: yes
Length:32mm 0.1mm
Width: 24mm 0.1mm
Thickness: 2.1mm 0.1mm
Weight: 2 g max
Warranty 5 Year Limited
Visit the Official ATP ProMax SDHC Card site HERE
There’s not much to installation, just just stick it in your device and you’re pretty much ready to go.
For comparison I’ve got several cards on hand, but sadly no larger capacity SD cards, I’ve given them away as I’ve moved to microSD card for most everything as they’re just so versatile and useful. So I’ve got the ATP ProMax II compared to several microSD cards and one of my XD cards as well. For all of the testing I used a USB card reader and each card was removed and replaced after each test.
For testing first we’ve got SiSoft Sandra 2009 Removable Storage Benchmark, Higher Scores are Better:
We see the ATP card comes in third overall on this test with close scores really.
Here’s a look at the 256MB test:
Here we see the ATP card comes in first place in this test with both the Read and Write scores topping out at a little over 17 MB/s. A little shy of the claimed 22.8MB/s, but it all depends on the device you’re using.
Next up we’ve got DiskBench test for the time it takes to Copy From, Copy To and Read From the cards. The same 350MB .AVI video file was used for all tests.
I used the Write or Copy To speed to rank the card in the chart. Results are in seconds, lower scores are better.
Here’s the transfer rates for those tests:
Here we can see the ATP card comes closer to it’s rated 22.8MB/s speed topping out at 19.06MB/s, not bad at all. On average the ATP card is the fastest of the bunch I’ve got on hand and it has an exceptional write speed.
Conclusion:
When you’re taking pictures or recording video the write speed is what you want to worry about really, you need to make sure the card can keep up with your camera and we can see the ATP ProMax II SD/SDHC card is an exceptionally fast memory card that should make any camera happy.
I can easily recommend this card to anyone looking for a fast and reliable memory card for any type of camera.
Pros:
Fast read and write speeds
Durable
Cons:
None really
| Grades: | |
| Overall |  |
| Design |  |
| Performance | |