Kingston 2GB microSD and cardreader review

Well today, my second 2GB microSD card from Kingston arrived. The reason I bought the Kingston was that I got a primo small cardreader with it. The 2GB works fine in my N95 and incombination with the cardreader it functions as a usb-stick. The right picture shows the cardreader, the microSD card and the next cap separate. As one can see from the pictures the size is about as small as usbstick can be. The microSD card itselfs fits snugly inside the back of the cardreader with nothing sticking out. Better yet, mounted in the cardreader, the cap still fits over the cardreader and can protect both, the cardreader and your 2GB microSD card.

The transferspeed of the microSD card in the cardreader clocked at 5 MB/s writing speed and a whopping 18 MB/s read speed. It clearly supports USB 2.0. Which is a lot more than the 0.9 MB/s of the N95 in usb-stick mode and the 0.6 MB/s of the wifi. My older microSD cardreader hardly did more than 0.96 MB/s being USB 1.1.  So these are kick-ass. Note that I did not set any password on the microSD card.

Gotten curious, tested my 2GB microSD card from SanDisk. It came up with 5.5 MB/s writing speed and read speed of 10 MB/s. Not bad but the Kingston nearly twice faster. The Kingston microSD card tested to work fine. I did a quick movie playback, no problems. The cardreader got a bit warm during usage but, there seemed no detrimental effects on the cardreader or the microSD card. The metal usb connector easily dumps its heat to its surrounding. It feels small but sturdy. Getting the microSD card out of the cardreader does requires a certain level of motorcontrol and good fingernails. Getting the cardreader out of the usb slot or the protective cap is easy. Pull on the cord.

Card encryption seems to work well too. I set a password on the card via the N95 and the card became instantly unreadable in the cardreader on the PC. As it should. Clearing the password made the card readable again with the cardreader.

Conclusions:

The microSD card as wel as the cardreader work well. The microSD card and the cardreader had excellent read and write speeds (20/5 MB/s). Used as a usb-stick in combination with the cardreader the high read speed is well suited to run applications or a virtual pc directly from it. One might even use it to boot a PC from the usb into one's private and personal OS. In that case I simply hope an 4 or 8GB version will come out for my N95 ;-) The cardreader is really small but usable and can be used as a store for a spare microSD card, turning it into a 2GB usb stick.