The fast transfer speeds and high capacities of SDHC cards has made them ideal for DSLR camera stills and videos, and their price continues to fall. At around £26, the Samsung 16GB SDHC Plus Class 10 card may not be the cheapest currently available, but it justifies its premium by boasting a number of protective qualities in addition to high read and write speeds.

Samsung claims that the card is waterproof, even against a 24-hour stint in sea water, and that it can withstand both the pressure of a 1.6 tonne vehicle and strong magnetic forces. Even if the card is beyond repair, claims Samsung, its data may be retrieved, and with the standard lock tab it's possible to prevent data from being recorded or deleted.

Adhering to the Class 10 SD card specification, the card offers maximum read and write speeds of 24MB/s and 21MB/s respectively, which is more than reasonable, although slightly behind the 30MB speeds offered by Sandisk's equivalent Class 10 card.

Its metallic finish is sleek, and when the card is bent it stays noticeably more rigid than the casings of standard plastic SDHC cards.

Tested in a Nikon D3100 body, the card was pitted against a rival manufacturer's Class 10 SDHC card. While the camera managed to maintain the same number of frames and speed with each, photos appeared to be written from the buffer to the Samsung 16GB SDHC Plus Class 10 card at a slightly quicker pace, since subsequent images could be taken sooner. Against the same card, images were also transferred to a computer around 20% quicker.

Verdict

If you don't need its protection, you'd be advised to shop around, since you may be able to find similarly-priced cards with slightly faster speeds. But its performance shows that it's nevertheless a competitive option. It also appears as the ideal partner for the growing range of waterproof compact cameras, should anything go wrong.

Targeted at those with HD camcorders, this 16GB SDHC flash drive is also an easy solution for expanding the storage of a netbook. However, it's first essential to ensure that your netbook (or laptop) supports the SDHC format, as many older devices are not compatible.

Putting the card into our test laptop, the machine wouldn't initially recognise it. This was easily resolved by formatting the card, and it was then easy to copy and save files.

The card is a 'Class Four' device, meaning it can transfer data at a fast 4Mbps. We found it was very quick when writing and reading small files, although larger files such as films took a little longer, with a 1GB file taking about four minutes to write.

With multi-gigabyte SD cards going for pocket money these days, companies have to work hard to make something that stands out.

The approach that companies such as Lexmark and SanDisk take is to make very fast cards, providing fast, continuous burst rates for pro digital cameras.

OCZ has instead opted for features, and it's made us love this little card. The storage itself is courtesy of a 2GB microSD card – the format favoured by many modern phones, though of course the iPhone doesn't support any extra storage at all – which slots into the side of a regular SD-sized adaptor ready to be fitted into your camera.

The really clever bit, though, is that the bottom half slips off to reveal a fullsized USB connection.

Performance from this 66x card is nothing stellar – a peak of around 8MB/sec – but the convenience of having a card that will fit into your computer, camera, PDA and, possibly, mobile phone is not to be underestimated.

USB flash drives come three a penny.

To get our attention they need to either have some kind of funky design, monster storage capacity or intriguing security features.

These Mimoco Mimobot Star Wars figurines are offered in 1GB, 2GB and 4GB capacities, though we couldn't find a 4GB model available for sale in the UK. No software comes loaded, but it's the designs that caught our eye.

A big hit in the office

Drives are available in the shape of Han Solo, Luke Skywalker (both pictured), Darth Vader, Princess Leia, Chewbacca and other Stars Wars luminaries.

For the money, you're clearly paying a premium for the Star Wars aesthetic, but they were such a hit in our office that for once we will overlook this point.

The drives were reliable performers, though removing the lids to dock them took some muscle the first time we tried.

This is a standard SD card that supports High Capacity, so you won't be able to use it in devices that don't already support SD HC. This lack of compatibility is down to the way SD HC cards read data, as they use FAT32, so they address sector writing, which isn't supported in older cards.

Bundles of storage

With 16GB of storage on this card you'll be able to store, on average, 320 hours of music or 100 hours of MPEG-4 footage at 384Kbps resolution. This amount of storage needs a fast controller, so this Class 6 card is guaranteed a constant data transfer rate of 6Mbps, but can obtain a maximum speed of 20Mbps.

We found the card could transfer 1GB in a little over three minutes, which is slow, but once reformatted, this dropped to two minutes 12 seconds, which is much more acceptable.

Compact flash cards don't normally come into our arena of examination, given that they're generally only for use with high-end digital cameras, but as we had the chance to play with this one, we though we'd include it.

This 4GB Adata card is a good price for the amount of storage you get, and the speed is noticeably better than cheaper cards, especially when your camera is writing colossal RAW or TIFF images to memory.

And while this 4GB card is plenty for most, Adata also makes 8GB and 16GB versions for all you memory-hungry snappers out there.

The Trifecta is the latest gadget from OCZ, and is a variation on the Dual SD card, insofar as it's an SD card with its own USB connector head. The device stores the actual data (in 1GB or 2GB iterations) on a Micro-SD card that slots into the side of the Trifecta. Bonkers, but it works.

The problem with storing a gig of data on something no bigger than the nail on your little finger though isn't data transfer. Neither was the worry about whether we could connect it to our PC - it hits home happily on both counts. The big problem was whether it would vanish down the murky recesses of our keyboard... it's so blinkin' wee!

It's fast, versatile, and the SD housing even has enough space for a pretty blue LED to blink away cheerily when it's connected to your PC. With a host of current camera phones taking the micro SD's midget-esque format, transferring pictures to your PC really couldn't be easier. Recommended.

So forget those bundled cards and get one of these. This card has been with us for a month and has been used to help test several cameras. Pop one in and suddenly you have 670-odd shots to take. For cameras with good video-shooting ability the card comes into its own.

Note the price; card storage has come right down in price this year. Check first that your camera takes an SD card - most do, but some, like those from Sony that use Memory Sticks or others that only use xD cards, won't be compatible.

For the last few months or so though, we had no problem with this card on a variety of camera brands and two different card readers.

Genuinely useful and pretty damn innovative. Very rarely are such words thrown around in the world of SD cards, but OCZ's Dual SD cards are just that. It's a standard sized card, the sort that fits snugly into most cameras out there, but has no need of a card reader to get the data from device to PC.

Slip off the housing at the end to reveal the USB connection, slot it into a waiting USB port and you're away. It really is that simple, convenient and fast to use. We've been seriously loving it in the office camera.