Top SD card deals: 4GB SDHC for £9, 2GB SD for £6 & more

Former_MSE_Lawrence

What's the deal?

Due to the eternal flash memory price wars between manufacturers, Play's selling own-brand 4GB memory cards (limited compatibility, see below) for £8.99 inc. delivery, Sandisk cards for £6.49, and Sandisk double packs for £12.49.

How to get 'em.

You just need to go to Play.com and add them to your basket. New users'll need to register an account. Postage is free on all items from Play (which is usually why it's cheapest).

• 4GB SDHC card £8.99 delivered. SDHC cards offer faster read and write times, but aren't compatible with that many gadgets, so be sure to check yours accepts them before buying.

• 2GB SD card £5.99 delivered. Play's own-brand SD card which should be compatible with most gadgets.

• 2GB Sandisk SD card £6.49 delivered. The name-brand version of SD cards; Sandisk is the market leader.

• 2 x 2GB Sandisk SD cards £12.49 delivered. Useful if you can go halves with a friend or your camera only takes 2gb cards max (as many do).

WARNING: Don't confuse them with mini/micro-SD cards

SD cards are used mostly for storing photos on digital cameras, though also by Nintendo Wiis, some mobile phones and some mp3 players.

They are not to be confused with Mini-SD or Micro SD cards, which are essentially the same but miniaturized. Whilst these latter usually come with adaptors to make them fit bigger SD slots, it's obviously impossible to get adaptors to make the bigger cards fit smaller slots, so check your gadget takes standard-size SD before buying these.

What can't they do?

Standard SD cards are fine for most things, but they aren't as fast as some specialist ones (ie the SDHC version above) at writing data. You'll only notice if you take fast-sequence photos, or do something equally demanding.

Seen a better SD card deal? I'd like to put a list of all the best current deals together, so post below and I'll add it in.

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-Lawrence

simond_2

MyMemory are doing a triple pack of MicroSD 2gb cards for £16.99 here, each one comes with a SD card adaptor so you can just use it as an SD card if you want (that's how I'm using it).

roddydogs

Amazing ASDA still wants over £18 for a 1gb SD card!

Tintent

I just want to reiterate the warning about the 4Gb cards. I bought one thinking I could store most of my music collection on it. None of the devices I own would accept it. That included MP3 players (x2), Cameras (x2), a photo frame, a mobile phone and even the card reader built into my Dell Laptop.

Bizarrely, it will work through an external cardreader pluged into a USB port both on my laptop and my car stereo but that wasn't the idea when I bought it.

If your device doesn't state specifically that it's compatible; take it that it's not!!

mrs-b_15

This week I purchased a Micro SD card - which is what goes in to my Nokia phone to store music and other things on.

2 GB Kingston Micro SD card with SD adapter available from amazon marketplace at £6.89 delivered from "FINDPRICE" who are actually www.dvd.co.uk

(Others sellers are available slightly cheaper - down to £6.59 delivered, but FINDPRICE had sold far more than anyone else hence my decision)

Kingston memory also comes with a lifetime garuantee which is not to be sniffed at!

monterey_2

A couple more for consideration:

SanDisk 4GB Ducati Special Edition Ultra II SDHC Plus Card £31.99
Expensive but very high speed and high quality.
Features:
- Capacity: 4GB
- Fast 20 MB/second sequential read/write speed
- Extended temperature tested: -13F to 185F (-25C to -85C)
- Includes key chain holder
- Includes RescuePRO Deluxe Recovery Software CD


SanDisk 1GB Secure Digital Memory Card (Refurbished!) £3.29
I thought a refurbished SD card must be a joke, but this is what they say about it.
Please Note: These are refurbished SanDisk memory cards which means they have been returned to SanDisk from retail outlets, tested by SanDisk, and deemed to be in perfect working order. It's not possible, as far as we are aware, for SanDisk to repair a card that isn't working so we can assume that all of these returns are either the result of user error, incompatibility with the hardware purchased or damaged packaging. The end result is that they represent the cheapest possible way of buying the popular SanDisk brand of digital storage. All cards come with a full 12-month warranty, exactly the same as if we were selling a brand new product

M-

IanWorthington

Its not worth risking your photos to dodgy memory cards. Do not buy from ebay (too many fakes), and pay the extra buck for cards from reliable manufacturers such as SanDisk and Kingston, sourced from reliable retailers. This forum plus the shopbots should enable you to find the cheapest deal.

JerryF

Some photography forums say the Play SDHC cards are manufactured by Toshiba.

There are different classes of SDHC cards which write at faster speeds (higher the number = the faster). The Play card is Class 4.

The cheapest Class 6 SDHC I could find last week was the Transcend SDHC 4Gb Class 6 card at Amazon marketplace from Flash Memory total price £11.35 including the £4.99 delivery (the card is only £6.36!) It arrived from Guernsey within 2 days. Today the price is £6.14 so £11.13 delivered. Another seller: digital-etimes has it at £10.48 delivered, but they have less feedback.

SDHC cards only work in your device if the device manufacturer says they are compatible. Panansonic has a list of compatible memory cards for all its products at:
http://panasonic.co.jp/pavc/global/cs

PrinceGaz

Unless a device is SDHC compatible (very few devices more than two or three years old are), then it will not work with SDHC cards. It will say in the device's manual if it is SDHC compatible, and will also probably include the SDHC logo near or on the cover over the memory-card slot. The logo is a stylised SD with HC in reverse colour below it. An example can be seen on this memory-card packaging (and the card itself) here, note that they are not the cheapest- just the first I found:

http://www.photoglossy.com/default.asp?part=SD4GBHC

If the device only has the SD logo (the same but without the inverse coloured HC below it), then it will not work with SDHC cards.

Also note that although some 4GB SD (not SDHC) cards are available, I would advise against using them in any device regardless of what they accept, as 4GB SD cards break the SD specification and malfunction in many devices. If you want a capacity above 2GB, then an SDHC compatible device and an SDHC card is the only safe way to go.

Note that contrary to what has been posted, SDHC cards are not necessarily faster than SD cards. In fact many higher rated (eg 66x speed, equivalent to 9.9MB/sec as the speed is a multiple of the original CD data speed of 150KB/sec) SD cards are somewhat faster than a Class 2 (2MB/sec) or Class 4 (4MB/sec) SDHC card, and may be faster than some Class 6 SDHC cards (6MB/sec). There are fast, sometimes very fast SD cards, and not so fast SDHC cards. The difference is there are no slow SDHC cards- they must be at least Class 2 whereas there is no minimum limit on SD cards so some unbranded ones are dreadfully slow.

moneysavingmumofone

The 2gb link is taking me to an sd card with a price of £59.99!!:eek:

dazed

JerryF wrote: »

Some photography forums say the Play SDHC cards are manufactured by Toshiba.

Yes they are if you remove the play sticker it has the Toshiba logo underneath. ANd in my opinion looks better also