Also dang hunting around for a different SD card reader netted me a 4gb and a 16gb class 4 micro sdhc cards. my 8gb is class 10, which I assume means it's the fastest one I own.
the 1 and 2gb microsds tho don't have a class rating. so... probably slow as heck.
Nonetheless, more micro sds = more good, right?
@Nine class 10 is the fastest of the C speed ratings
More modern cards are rated as UHS-I, UHS-II, or UHS-III, represented by a 1, 2, or 3 inside of a U. (as well as a roman numeral I, II, or III next to the SD(HC/XC) logo) UHS-1 is the same speed as Class 10 and is the most common type you see now but I'm pretty sure faster cards do exist
@Nine also for the C ratings the number is the minimum number of megabytes per second you can write to the card, and for the U ratings multiply the number by 10 to get the minimum MB/s rating (U1 is 10MB/s, U2 is 20, etc)
@Nine actually apparently there is no U2, just U1 and U3 so never mind about that but they are still 10MB/s and 30MB/s minimum
There's also a V rating we hadn't seen before that goes higher, the numbers are the same as the C rating but they go up to V90 apparently
@Felthry welp at least I'm definitely forewarned about this now so I know what to look for. thank you ^^;
@Nine no problem! I like sharing interesting things
@Nine also, cards with no class rating _might_ have an x rating similar to CDs but this really gives no information as the x rating is often a best-case scenario because it's not standardized and vendors want big numbers of course
aaaaand apparently the whole thing about UHS is not actually right, the U rating (which I was talking about) and UHS are two different things so just replace all the UHSs with U
@Nine U1 and U3 cards are both UHS-I, UHS-II cards are faster than both of those and even have more pins:
@Felthry i love it. more pins, more power :D
@Nine it's the same as how USB 3.0 added more pins to the USB standard. They physical dimensions and arrangement of the pins limited speeds, so they added a second set of contacts for high-speed communication while keeping the old ones for backwards compatibility
@Felthry ...woah that's.... huh. actually really helpful to know as well. and surprisingly simple. niiice. :D so these old Class 4 rating ones are 4MB/s? I take it the really old non class rated Micro SD cards will be effectively Class 1 so 1MB/s maximum?
@Nine class 4 cards guarantee a minimum sequential write speed of 4 MB/s, but it could be higher; that's just what they guarantee
Also there is no C5 rating so a 5 MB/s card would still be marked C4
@Felthry I literally own no SDXC cards yet. ^^; I knew they existed, but never saw one, but thanks for explaining the speed ratings, because now if I ever get one, I know what to look for :D Which is super helpful