Lexar has launched a new Professional USB 3.0 SD and CF combo card reader. The USB 3.0 connectivity provides a faster data transfer rate than the USB 2.0 version of this device. This new reader is compatible with the UDMA CF specs and the SDXC and UHS-I SD card specs, so you shouldn’t have a compatibility issue with any of your memory cards.
The only other USB 3.0 card reader that I’ve seen on the market to date is this one from Delkin. Now, if we can just get some Thunderbolt-compatible card readers out…
The new Lexar USB 3.0 reader retails for $49.95 and is currently available for pre-order at Adorama.
Check out the video from Jeff Cable, who gives a quick demo and comparison of the new card reader’s speed potential.
John van Kleef says
I thought USB3 was supposed to be 10x faster than USB2
Why is it that in the demo video the USB3 device does the job in only half the time of the USB2 device? That would make it only twice as fast as far as I’m concerned. They claim USB3 has speeds of 5GB per second. So proove it, show it! The items being transferred to the laptop were 7.41 GB in size. With USB3 specs, that should happen in less than 2 seconds (???). Yet, it takes a full two minutes.
Eric Reagan says
I don’t think that’s a scientific test Jeff was doing there. Transferring on both connections at the same time is probably going to affect the speed of both. Additionally, USB 3.0 can only transfer as fast as the card’s speed, along with other hardware limitations.
While USB 3.0 will allow 5Gbps as a spec limitation, CF card speeds max out much lower than that; however, they are still fast enough to make a difference when transferring between USB 3.0 vs. USB 2.0.
Miles Waite says
Oh boy. You do realize the weak link here is the laptop hard drive. Let’s think about for a second. Can any HD out there write 5GB a sec? SSD’s are only in the 250megs/sec range. If you are getting a write speed of 40-60meg/sec on a regular laptop, I think you are doing good. The laptop is also writing from the other usb 2 card reader at the same time. That will also take its toll on total write performance. Now you can look up on youtube “Samsung SSD raid” and you will find out that if you put 24 SSD drives in a raid YOU WILL ONLY GET 2GB/Sec. I think we are done here.