Reliability of off-brand memory cards

Bought a 2GB SD card at Fry's -- PQI Memory is the brand name. The card died
after a coupla weeks. To its credit, PQI is sending a replacement but I am
wary of using their memory now for anything important. Do these off-brand
cards tend to be less unreliable than name-brand cards like SanDisk? Has
anyone heard of PQI's reputation for reliability?

TIA.

"Zen Cohen" writes:
Bought a 2GB SD card at Fry's -- PQI Memory is the brand name. The card died
after a coupla weeks. To its credit, PQI is sending a replacement but I am
wary of using their memory now for anything important. Do these off-brand
cards tend to be less unreliable than name-brand cards like SanDisk? Has
anyone heard of PQI's reputation for reliability?

PQI has in general been pretty respectable. I don't think Sandisk is
all that great either, especially the non-Ultra line.

I just got a Transcend 2GB card for $40.95 at newegg.com, wish me luck.

Zen Cohen wrote:
Bought a 2GB SD card at Fry's -- PQI Memory is the brand name. The
card died after a coupla weeks. To its credit, PQI is sending a
replacement but I am wary of using their memory now for anything
important. Do these off-brand cards tend to be less unreliable than
name-brand cards like SanDisk? Has anyone heard of PQI's reputation
for reliability?
TIA.

I'd never heard of PQI until someone mention it here a few days ago.

I have to say...
They offer an 8GB(!) CF card for only $199, and as much as I'd love to jump
on that deal, I can't help but think they've GOT to be cutting corners
SOMEWHERE.
-That's just too dang cheap.
Perhaps others here will provide evidence or statistics that can boost my
confidence...(that means more than, "Mine works," btw). I just paid $199
for a 4GB SanDisk Utra III, and that seemed cheap to me. I'm going to
Ukraine in a few weeks, and guess which one I'm more confident in... When
you up a creek due to memory card failure, it pays to pay...and be
reasonably sure of reliability.

-M

I'd never heard of PQI until someone mention it here a few days ago.

I have to say...
They offer an 8GB(!) CF card for only $199, and as much as I'd love to
jump on that deal, I can't help but think they've GOT to be cutting
corners SOMEWHERE.
-That's just too dang cheap.

Most likely it's slow as hell. I picked up 'ultra high speed 140x' GXT 4GB
card for about $180, and it's much slower than 20x Kingston 1GB...

Peter

Paul Rubin wrote:
"Zen Cohen" writes:
Bought a 2GB SD card at Fry's -- PQI Memory is the brand name. The card died
after a coupla weeks. To its credit, PQI is sending a replacement but I am
wary of using their memory now for anything important. Do these off-brand
cards tend to be less unreliable than name-brand cards like SanDisk? Has
anyone heard of PQI's reputation for reliability?

PQI has in general been pretty respectable. I don't think Sandisk is
all that great either, especially the non-Ultra line.

I just got a Transcend 2GB card for $40.95 at newegg.com, wish me luck.

I have used Lexar, Kingston, SanDisk, Dane Electric and PNY cards. The
only card that failed was a Lexar. That was several years ago, I could
probably restore it now. If you write from a Mac to a card, several
cameras won't recognize the card, so you reformat it on a PC and then
again in the camera. Anyway a friend calls anything not Lexar or San
Disk off brand, scoffed when I told him I had a Kingston 50X for my
D200. So I think off brands are in the eye of the beholder. Transcend
seems to be in the upper ranges of Rob Galbraith's data base, just
below the fastest Lexar and SanDisk, so I wouldn't worry too much.

Tom

It is possible that because nobody heard of PQI (me including) it cannot
put a mark up on the price that others carry with that name (Lexar,
Sandisk etc). For all we know they are made on the same factory and the
only difference is the plastic they use. I clearly remember when Lexar
had a spell of bad luck when they fat fingered a whole series of cards
and nobody wanted to touch them with a barge pole.


Mark² wrote:
Zen Cohen wrote:
Bought a 2GB SD card at Fry's -- PQI Memory is the brand name. The
card died after a coupla weeks. To its credit, PQI is sending a
replacement but I am wary of using their memory now for anything
important. Do these off-brand cards tend to be less unreliable than
name-brand cards like SanDisk? Has anyone heard of PQI's reputation
for reliability?
TIA.

I'd never heard of PQI until someone mention it here a few days ago.

I have to say...
They offer an 8GB(!) CF card for only $199, and as much as I'd love to jump
on that deal, I can't help but think they've GOT to be cutting corners
SOMEWHERE.
-That's just too dang cheap.
Perhaps others here will provide evidence or statistics that can boost my
confidence...(that means more than, "Mine works," btw). I just paid $199
for a 4GB SanDisk Utra III, and that seemed cheap to me. I'm going to
Ukraine in a few weeks, and guess which one I'm more confident in... When
you up a creek due to memory card failure, it pays to pay...and be
reasonably sure of reliability.

-M

I had maybe 3 SanDisk go back once I gave them the serials (wouldn't
write/format). One was a thumbdrive. They provided me with an online
self-addressed pre-paid FedEx label. All were replaced and no problems
since. Pretty good customer service, imo.

I would hesitate against one large storage card over two smallers if you are
traveling. When they die, it gets ugly.

I did buy a CompUSA branded 512meg MMC card for the Nokia phone. The
computer sees it as a Kingson or something like that. No problems...yet.

B~

Dan wrote:
It is possible that because nobody heard of PQI (me including) it cannot
put a mark up on the price that others carry with that name (Lexar,
Sandisk etc). For all we know they are made on the same factory and the
only difference is the plastic they use. I clearly remember when Lexar
had a spell of bad luck when they fat fingered a whole series of cards
and nobody wanted to touch them with a barge pole.

The problem is that brand name doesn't always equate to the actual
manufacturer. In many ways, basic flash memory cards are a
commodity item. Resellers can simply take bids and decide who
they want to purchase from. One lot from a certain brand may be
from a different supplier than another lot. If there's a bad lot, they
might eat the cost of returns. Even some of the large manufacturers
like Lexar might buy commodity parts if their own factories can't
churn out enough product to meet demand.

Although SanDisk seems to have a better reputation for compatibility
and reliability, I found that a circa 2002 red/blue 128 MB CF card was
the slowest one I ever bought. I ran some Norton Utilities format
tests, and CF cards with PNY or Memorex labels outperformed the
SanDisk. However - the SanDisk Ultra II seems to have done well
in speed tests - from many reviews.

PNY seems to be one of the big relabellers. I bought a 512 MB SD
card that was labelled as made in Japan. It clearly said "TOSHIBA"
on the back, so there was no question as to who the manufacturer
was.

Possibly the most consistently reliable flash card standard is the
xD Picture Card. It was basically one manufacturer (Toshiba) sold
as two brand names (FujiFilm and Olympus). Even SanDisk
resold Olympus labelled xD cards made by Toshiba at one time.
I think SanDisk may now make xD cards.

Zen Cohen wrote:
Bought a 2GB SD card at Fry's -- PQI Memory is the brand name. The card died
after a coupla weeks. To its credit, PQI is sending a replacement but I am
wary of using their memory now for anything important. Do these off-brand
cards tend to be less unreliable than name-brand cards like SanDisk? Has
anyone heard of PQI's reputation for reliability?

TIA.


I buy whatever is the cheapest at the time I need new memory, from a
reputable retailer, like Newegg.
I have never been disappointed.
They all work just fine.
In 5 years I've only had one card fail.
About 4 years ago I bought a 64MB DANE CF card on ebay that cratered
after a few uses.

On Mon, 15 May 2006 16:45:08 GMT, B. Peg wrote:

I would hesitate against one large storage card over two smallers if you
are traveling. When they die, it gets ugly.

Ugliness is in the eye of the beholder. That is, another way of
looking at it is if your large card dies, you would replace it as
quickly as possible with a beauty of a new card. On the other hand,
if you had two of the same smaller cards and one died, you'd
continue traveling, waiting for the other shoe ... card to drop.
Now if you're traveling where camera/computer shops don't exist,
making it difficult to get another card, you'd probably want to
bring added protection in the form of a second camera.