PNY 4Gb Compactflash Recordable Media Review

For over 20 years, PNY Technologies have been producing all types of computer peripherals from Graphics boards to Flash media.

PNY 4Gb Compactflash Specification

• Compatibility: 100% with all digital cameras
• Voltage: 3.3v
• Consumption Read/Write: 30mA/30mA
• Operating temperature: 0 - 60 degrees
• Non-operating temperature: -20 - 65 degrees
• Humidity: 95% max
• Vibration: 15G's peak to peak
• Shock: 1000G's peak to peak

PNY 4Gb Compactflash Build quality
What to say about the build quality of a Compactflash card. PNY say this card resists breakage and isn't affected by extreme heat or cold. The specification tells a different story. There are places in the world that go colder than -20 and this could cause problems and that's just the non-operating temperature.

This card has a Toshiba marker when the images are brought up through MyComputer.

PNY 4Gb Compactflash Performance
To give an indication of the speed of the card, I have compared it against the Sandisk Extreme III with a 20Mb second read/write speed which is about 133x. I ran a series of shots in ten seconds on a Nikon D300, which incorporates the new EXPEED processor, and timed the download time to the cards.

The Sandisk card took 41 seconds to write the 28 shots taken in RAW. The PNY card only managed to take 20 RAW shots in ten seconds as once the initial burst was over, longer gaps between shooting took place suggesting a slower write speed. Indeed, the time it took to download these pictures was 40 seconds.

This means that the PNY card takes twice as long to download compared with the Sandisk Extreme III.

I also used 50 images to download onto the computer which has an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core processor 2.2GHz with 2Gb of RAM. I downloaded the images through a Lexar USB 2 Multi-card reader running at 480Mbps.

The Sandisk Extreme III took 34 seconds downloading the 50 RAW images. This equates to a transfer rate of 14Mbps whilst the PNY card, downloading 50 images, took 1min 10sec meaning a transfer speed of 7.1Mbps.

This information gives us the understanding that the PNY write speed is approximately 65x which has been confirmed by PNY. It's a good job, actually as neither the card, packaging or website mention the speed. Distinctly average by today's standards and at approximately £22, works out about £5 cheaper than the Sandisk Extreme III 4Gb.

PNY 4Gb Compactflash Verdict
As photographers get more demanding over download speed, it just doesn't do to bring out a card with a slow performance.

The only people I would say could get away with using this card would be landscape photographers with lots of time to spare. Not that it takes hours to download, just that the performance of the continuous shooting between the two test cards was noticeable.

What you need to bear in mind is that for the extra fiver, you're roughly doubling your write speed.

OVERALL

The PNY 4Gb Compactflash card costs around £22 online. Got to The PNY website here, to learn more.