I would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying a sample of their 32GB microSDHC UHS-1 Flash Card for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About Silicon Power:

 

“Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists in International Business, Global Marketing, and Technical Engineering of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, Silicon Power has been recognized and well accepted by millions of end-users in more than 100 countries, becomes the world's leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives in less than a decade. Headquartered in Taipei, we continuously established various branches throughout the world including Netherlands, Japan, Russia, Mainland China and other emerging market to reach the worldwide market.

Silicon Power's overall performance has gradually drawn great attention worldwide. In 2006, we received Taiwan Rising Star Award for our foreign business achievement. In 2008, we won 17th National Outstanding Small & Medium Enterprise Award for our outstanding progress. Moreover, with superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in several competitions and awarded Taiwan Excellence and COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Winning trust of global consumers, Silicon Power holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last seven years. According to the Common Wealth Magazine's 2010 Survey of Taiwan Top 1000 Manufacturers, our 2009 revenue growth rate was ranked No.11 among Taiwan's top 1000 manufacturers, and even ranked No.1 in semiconductor industry.

Positioned as Passionate, Creative and Hungry for Success, Silicon Power introduces products for users who are seeking individualized, unique and personal digital storage devices. With the mission of creating unprecedented experience for users, Silicon Power will endeavor to deliver a full range of high quality products that have innovative designs, distinctly unique features and comprehensive after sales services to create and fulfill your personal memory.”

Product Features:

 

- Storing and playing high-quality images and improving the quality of 1080p full-HD video with any microSD UHS-1 compatible Android and other Smartphones, tablets

- Powerful Transfer speeds, delivering faster reading and writing time:

Superior series: up to 90/45 MB/s reading and writing (microSDHC UHS-1) *

- Class 10 video recording performance **

* Transfer rates may vary, depending on system platform / software / interface and microSD card capacity.

* These capacities only come in a UHS-1, meaning they have a data transfer rate of 12MB/s

 

Product Specifications:

 

- Form factor: microSDHC (16/32 GB)

- Card dimension: 15 mm x 11 mm x 1 mm

- Operating temperature: 0ºC to 70 ºC

- Storage temperature: -40ºC to 85ºC

- Compatible with microSDHC UHS-1 enabled host devices.

- Combined with a SDHC adapter can be used as standard SDHC memory card

- Lifetime Warranty

* Compatible with microSDHC enabled host devices; not compatible with SD devices and SD readers.

* Some of the listed capacity on a Flash storage device is used for formatting and other functions and thus is not available for data storage. As such, the actual available capacity for data storage is less than what is listed on the products.

 

In order to be able to test out the Superior microSDHC UHS-1 memory card, Silicon Power were nice and sent along their latest All-in-One USB 3.0 card reader. The product is shipped inside a blister packaging, with a list of supported cards in front:

 

 

 

A small product description in multiple languages can be observed on the back side; along with the card reader we will also receive the USB 3.0 data transmission cable:

 

 

 

 

The card reader is very light and in the front, right sides we have openings for:

 

-CF Type I

-XD Card

-M2/micro SD/SDHC/SDXC

-SD/MMC/SDHC/SDXC

-MS Pro/MS Duo/MS Pro Duo/MS Pro HG/MS XC

 

 

 

 

On the left side the card reader features the USB 3.0 port:

 

 

 

On the bottom side of the product we will find the code name along with the serial number and service telephone number:

 

 

 

Let’s go back to the main attraction which is the microSDHC UHS-1 memory card which is also shipped with a SD card adapter; on the frontal side of the packaging we will receive information about the total storage space, but also about the compatible devices and rated transfer speeds:

 

 

 

A small product description can be observed on the back, in multiple languages:

 

 

 

Here is a close-up of the card along with the supplied adapter:

 

 

 

Despite the enhanced speeds, the microSDHC we will test inside this article still retains the same dimensions; the card comes with the Class 10 logo which means that we are able to record Full HD video with a minimum transfer rate of 10MB/s along with a secondary logo representing UHS Speed Class 1 which allows recording real-time broadcasts and large HD video files (UHS bus):

 

 

 

On the back side we will get to see the 8 golden pin contacts:

 

 

 

The testbench was composed from the following hardware:

 

CPU: Intel I7 Retail @ stock

Motherboard: Foxconn BloodRage with G42 BIOS

RAM: 3x2GB Patriot PVT36G1600LLK 1600MHz

Video: Sparkle GTX 470 with stock and OMNI A.L.C.

Power Supply: Nexus RX-8500 850W modular

HDD: Seagate Barracuda 500GB 7200.11 & Patriot TorqX 64GB SSD

Case: Thermaltake Armor+ LCS, stock cooling

OS: Windows 8

ASUS U3S6

USB 3.0 Card Reader

The Silicon Power 32GB microSDHC UHS-1 Flash Card comes formatted FAT32:

 

To determine the flash drive read speeds, the HD Tune v5 utility was used:

 

 

HD Tune File Benchmark

 

 

Summary Graph (Read Performance)

 

To measure the real life performance, I have used the Total Commander application to copy to the flash drive and from the flash drive the same file and recorded the transfer speeds, when they have stabilized.

 

File Copy

File Read

Summary Graph (Real-life performance)

 

 

Despite the appearance as a regular microSDHC card, the new models offer very good read/write performances compared to their predecessors. UHS-1 stands from Ultra High Speed and is a speed class for SDHC and SDXC memory cards; this standard specifies that the cards have a bus interface speed of up to 104MB/s.

 

What we need at the moment is more and more devices which support this new standard and would allow taking advantage of the high transfer speeds. The cards are compatible with regular SDHC devices but will operate at lower speeds.

 

The 32GB SP032GBSTHDU1V10-SP model is available online for about 32 Euros.

 

Silicon Power 32GB Superior microSDHC UHS-1 Flash Card is Recommended For:

 

We would like to thank again to Silicon Power for making this review possible!