Good cheap reader

Author's Rating:

Pros: Cheap, reliable brand name, solid construction, works flawlessly.

Cons: It's not as fast as the more expensive udma readers or a firewire devices.

The Bottom Line: 
If this supports all your media, and you don't require very high speed transfers (udma) for very big cards, this is a solid device that will definitely meet your needs.

Author's Review
I don't know that there's a whole lot to say about these cheap devices, but I think it always helps to have as much good or bad feedback to help decide between the large number of devices out there.  I actually use microSD, SDHC, and Compact Flash very regularly so I wanted a reader that at least read those cards.  I also didn't want to waste money on an expensive udma reader, as I don't really care that much about how long it takes to copy even an 8GB card to my computer.  If I was transferring more than that at a time I'd probably be more likely to spend the money on a faster device.

Anyway, as I said there are tons of these devices out there and when you look at reviews, almost every device has a bunch of people saying it's garbage and a bunch saying it's pretty good.  I looked at the specs of a few I was considered and decided to stick with a reliable name in Kingston and something cheap enough I could just throw it out and buy another if it didn't work well.

I have no complaints with this unit whatsoever.  As I said, I transfer gpsdata frequently on microSD, photos and video on shc and compact flash.  With my camera I shoot HD video and a 14 bit raw photos, so I'm transferring a lot of data.  The card has worked flawlessly with every brand and size of card I have tried (so far that includes various Kingston, Transcend, Patriot, and SanDisk cards).  It's much faster than the cheap single card readers I had for my sd cards, but I haven't done benchmarks so I can't say exactly how fast the device is with specific cards. 

The light on top is useul so you know the device is powered on, that a card is in the device, and it blinks when transferring data.  That's a small thing, but if you ever get a bad usb port, or a bad card, or have some software problem, it helps troubleshoot where the problem is.

The short cord w/ the extender cable works fine for me.

The device is just cheap plastic but it feels solid and doesn't seem like there's anything that is going to break any time soon.  The device was a bit smaller tha I expected which is a good thing.

Also, very important for me, this device worked flawlessly with Linux.  I didn't have to do anything special.  When I plug the device in, nothing happens, but as soon as I put a card in, it's detected.  If I put in multiple cards at the same time, each is detected as a separate volume (similar to a drive in Windows).

As I said, not much to say about a device this simple, but I looked at dozens of different readers and I feel I made a good choice with this one.  It works flawlessly and I can't think of a single thing to complain about.