I am just a normal person, but after spending a lot of time searching for product reviews online, I realized there aren't enough reviews from people who actually use products in their daily lives. I decided I would make reviews that I hope are helpful to others who are searching. Feel free to leave comments, but please make sure they are useful, and don't flame other people's comments. To see how I rate each product I will review, please see Rating Breakdown.

Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Transcend RDM2 USB Memory Card Reader

The Good: Compact, simple reader that takes a variety of memory cards.

The Bad: The SD slot can be a bit tricky.

Rating:
  • Overall Experience: 9
  • Features: 9
  • User-Friendliness: 9
  • Style: 8
  • Quality: 8
  • Value: 9
  • Total: 8.7

To see how I rate each category please click Rating Breakdown

In The Box:

Card Reader
USB cable
Instruction sheet and CD-Rom

Manufacturer's Website: Transcend







Overview: The Transcend RDM2 is a pretty basic USB memory card reader. The nice thing about it is being able to plug memory cards directly into your computer rather than searching for the cable to connect your camera, PDA, or whatever device happens to hold the memory. This model accepts the following types of memory cards: SD, MicroSD, MiniSD, Compact Flash I and II, CF Microdrives, a variety of MMC cards, Sony Memory Sticks, and xD. I mostly use the SD and microSD slots, but I have had a compact flash card in it also. It is a simple device that says it will transfer at 480 MB per second. I have a built in card reader on my computer, but found it was extremely small. In my own "non-scientific" tests, this card reader was about 4 times faster than the built in reader. I learned my lesson...I won't pay extra for the built in card reader next time. It's worth the extra speed to have the external reader. Although Transcend no longer lists this particular model on their website, there is a model called the RDM5, which is practically identical except for the case color.

Overall Experience: This has been very easy to use. It has only one main downfall. The first is that the SD slot seems to stick a little. It's not a huge problem, you just have to make sure you have the card lined up just right to get it to slide in easily. I have consistently seen fast transfer rates and I have never had it fail (unlike the very cheap no-name one that came in my camera bundle...it failed after one use).

Features: As far as features go, it would mostly be the speed, which as I said before is much faster than the built in reader in my computer. The other is the variety of memory cards it accepts. That's pretty standard on card readers. It would be pointless to buy a different device for every kind of card you may own. There are some card readers that are faster and accept a few more types of cards.

User-Friendliness: This Card reader has been very easy to use. It was as simple as plugging it in, inserting a card, and finding the correct drive on the My Computer screen (Windows users...don't know for Mac) That can be the difficult part since it will show 6 or 7 new drives representing the slots on the reader. I named the drives I used to make it easier. For example one drive is now called "SD Card."

Style: Overall I like the look of this card reader. The reason it loses points is I feel like it could be a little smaller, or at least put all of the slots on one side so I don't have to turn it to plug in different cards. This is probably a personal preference, but I would prefer if all of the slots pointed to the front.

Quality: The Transcend RDM2 loses quality points because of the sticky SD slot. There is no reason it should be difficult to slide my card in. My camera, phone, and PDA have no problem sliding cards into them. I don't know what causes the problem, but I'm sure it doesn't have to be that way. Perhaps not all of the readers do this, but in my opinion none of them should.

Value: This card reader is a good value. I purchased mine for $14 (which is MSRP) plus shipping. I considered some that were rated faster, but they were more than twice the price. This reader is plenty fast for transferring a couple gig of pictures or files, so I don't feel it would be worth it to pay twice as much for a faster one.

Final Thoughts: The RDM2 card reader is a good value. It's very simple and works correctly every time I use it. I wish it didn't have the problem with the SD card slot. It would have rated a little higher if the cards slid in without problems. For the money, I wouldn't hesitate to buy the same one again. As I said before, I would definitely pass on the built-in readers for my future computers. Although it's nice to avoid one more cable, the speed is far too slow.

No comments: