Review: Transcend Ultimate 600X 32GB Memory Card 90MB/s

Introduction

The Transcend Ultimate 600X 32GB Memory Card is a high-speed SD card, offering up to 90MB/s transfer speed. Transcend produces a variety of memory products and related accessories. The company was founded 1988 in Taiwan. While Transcend produces memory modules such as SD and CF cards, the memory chips inside the cards are made by other manufacturers.

While the card prominently features 90MB/s speed, this is a maximum read speed and no specific number is given for write speed. We'll get to that in a moment.

Transcend advertises the Ultimate 600X SD card with the label "MLC inside." Multi-Level Cell (MLC) memory stores two bits per cell and generally offers superior performance over Triple Level Cell (TLC) flash which stores three bits per cell. MLC requires more material to produce than TLC, but the result is usually faster speed and higher durability.

Transcend Ultimate 600x SD cards are offered in 8, 16, 32, 64 and 128GB capacities. The 32GB SDHC version was tested for this review. Also see the 64GB Ultimate 600x review.

Performance

Transcend promised 90MB/s performance, and in read speed this card overdelivered. In several USB 3.0 card readers it exceeded 95 MB/s sequential read. The write speed, which Transcend does not quote, peaked at 39.5 MB/s. Transcend only quotes "up to 90MB/s" transfer speed for this card, which is the read speed, not the write speed. Transcend does quote write speeds on its faster U3 cards.

Card: Transcend 600x 32GB
Benchmark: CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64
Program settings: 1000 MB, 5 passes, random test data
Operating system: Windows 10 Pro
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.40GHz
RAM: 32GB DDR3 1600

In cameras the 32GB Ultimate 600x had mixed performance. The card measured up to 36.2 MB/s average in the Canon Rebel T6s write speed test. However other cameras, most notably the D600 and D800, the card occasionally seemed to lag. Secure Digital cards are complicated devices, with on-board controllers that are literally computers and can perform differently depending on the SD host device.

It should be noted that the 64 GB Ultimate 600x card has also been tested and had much better write performance, both in benchmarks as well as in cameras.

Cameras tested with this card: Canon 5D Mark IV, Canon 5Ds, Canon 6D, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon 70D, Canon 77D, Canon 80D, Canon EOS M5, Canon Rebel T6i/T6s, Canon Rebel T7i, Fuji X-Pro2, Fuji X-T10, Nikon D500, Nikon D750, Nikon D810, Nikon D800, Nikon D600, Nikon D7500, Nikon D7200, Nikon D7100, Nikon D5600, Nikon D5500, Nikon D5300, Nikon D3300, Olympus E-M1, Olympus E-M1 II, Olympus E-M5, Olympus E-M5 II, Olympus PEN-F, Olympus E-M10, Panasonic GH5, Pentax K-3 II, Samsung NX1, Sony A7R II, Sony A9, Sony A6000, Sony A6300

Transcend backs their memory cards with a lifetime warranty.

Made in Taiwan.

The following table contains information encoded in the SD card.

Available sizes and prices

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