Hoodman Steel 2000x UHS-II 64GB SDXC Memory Card Review

Introduction

The Hoodman Steel 2000x UHS-II card promises both speed and durablility. This UHS-II card is advertised with 300MB/s read and 260MB/s write speeds. Although the fast transer rate requires UHS-II, the card is backwards compatible with UHS-I and standard SD devices but will operate at reduced speed in such devices. It supports SDR104 mode that operates up to 104MB/s bus speed in UHS-I mode. The Hoodman Steel 2000x card carries the UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) designation that means it can sustain at least 30MB/s continuous recording for 4K HD video. Hoodman offers the Steel UHS-II card in 64 and 128GB capacities. The 64GB SDXC card, model HS64GBSD2 with UPC 017932334783 is tested in this review.

Hoodman Steel cards are ruggedized with steel. The steel is a thin metal layer that is part of the card label but it is rigid enough to add some durability and reduce flexibility. The card is notably less flexible than comparabe 2000x UHS-II cards from Lexar. Hoodman Steel cards are covered by a lifetime warranty.

Performance

Testing the speed of the Hoodman Steel 2000x 64GB SDXC card was accomplished using a variety of card readers and cameras. In card readers the fastest benchmark was 273.6 MB/s sequential read. Although this is very fast, it is not quite up to the 300MB/s read speed claim made by Hoodman. The write speed was even further from the 260MB/s claim. The highest sequential write benchmark was 183.6 MB/s, with most benchmarks below 180MB/s. In UHS-I SD card readers the card was limited to UHS-I speed and reached 94.1 MB/s read and 91.3 MB/s write. These are good speeds for UHS-I and reflect the limitation of UHS-I.

Card: Hoodman Steel UHS-II 64GB
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

The Hoodman Steel 2000x 64GB card was tested in digital cameras to assess write speed. The average write speed during continuous shooting for several camera models is shown in the table below. More camera tests will be performed and added to the table as results are available.

Cameras tested with this card: Canon EOS R, Canon 77D, Canon EOS M5, Canon Rebel T7i, Fuji X-T3, Nikon D7500, Nikon Coolpix P1000, Panasonic GH5, Sony A9

The following table contains information encoded in the SD card.

The card tested has a production date of March 2017. The card was made in Taiwan. The internal card registry shows the Manufacturer ID as 0x00009c and OEM ID 0x534f which transaltes to "SO".

Available sizes and prices

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