SanDisk Extreme III 4GB SDHC Flash Card

Final Thoughts and Conclusions

The SanDisk Extreme III 30 MB/s Edition class 6 memory cards have been on the market since August 27, 2008 and have proven themselves to be among the fastest SD cards ever released. The original purpose of these cards was to pair with the Nikon D90 as a 30MBps SDHC was needed that can write 39 6MB frames at 4.5 frames per second. SanDisk did not have a card on the market that was able to write at these extreme write speeds, so they increased performance on the Extreme III series by 10MBps up from the former 20MBps and came out with the Extreme III 30 MB/s Edition. It should aslo be noted that the recently announced Canon EOS Rebel T1i Digital SLR offers continuous shooting at 3.4 fps for up to 170 large/fine JPEG images or up to nine RAW images in a single burst when using a class 6 or higher SD or SDHC memory card. If you want to purchase an SDHC memory card for a higher-end DSLR camera a class 6 memory card like the SanDisk Extreme III is clearly required.

The 4GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card that we reviewed here today can store more than 2,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 8 hours of MPEG 4 video¹. This is obviously going to be a tad small for someone that takes pictures professionally, but keep in mind 8GB and 16GB versions of this card are also available.

When it comes to pricing the 4GB SanDisk Extreme III 30 MB/s Edition can be found for $46.24 shipped, while the 8GB version can be purchased for $74.99 shipped. This price is high considering a mainstream 4GB SDHC like the Kingston Technology SD4/4GBET Class 4 Flash Card can be purchased from Newegg for $7.49 shipped. If you have a digital SLR camera like the Nikon D90 you really need a card like the 4GB SanDisk Extreme III 30 MB/s Edition, but for those that have point-and-shoot digital cameras the 6x price premium is not worth it.

Legit Bottom Line: The 4GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC Flash memory card is super fast, but costs more than six times a slower card with the same storage capacity!

¹ – Approximations based on compressed JPEG images on a 5MP camera and hours of Super Fine MPEG 4 video (320 x 240, 384 kbps video). Actual numbers may vary depending on camera model, resolution and compression.