With so many different manufacturers entering the memory card storage space, we are seeing an abundance of choices for all types, sizes, and speeds of memory cards. While most are targeted for general everyday needs, some are made for more specialized types of photography and videography. Acer’s latest SDXC memory cards certainly fit the latter category, made to appeal to demanding content creators. With a solid weather-proof construction and transfer speeds of up to 300 MB/sec, the Acer SC900 memory cards are aimed to be some of the most reliable and fastest UHS-II memory cards on the market today. Let’s see if the card lives up to our high expectations.
Overview and Build Quality
While Acer is more widely known for its laptops, monitors, and other consumer electronics, it was a bit surprising for me to find out that the company has also expanded its product line to consumer storage. According to Acer Storage website, the company makes everything from fast CFexpress cards to PCIe M.2 NVME SSD drives as well.
The SC900 SDXC UHS-II memory cards offer quite a few features to make them very competitive with some of the top SD memory cards on the market. While the performance characteristics of the memory card look good on paper, one of its biggest advantages is the weather-proof design. It is shockproof, temperature-proof, waterproof, vibration-proof, and X-ray-proof.
I had a chance to take this card with me on a trip to the Middle East earlier this year. I used it quite heavily as my primary card, and it performed very well – from dusty and sandy Liwa desert in UAE, all the way to cold and snowy Cappadocia in Turkey. I poured some water on the memory card, wiped it clean and it continued to work. It even survived my cat, which decided to chew on the memory card a little while it was sitting on a couch. Without a doubt, this card is built very well!
Acer SC900 SDXC UHS-II Memory Card Specifications
Let’s take a quick look at the specifications of the Acer SC900:
- Product Type: SDXC
- Capacity: 64, 128 and 256 GB
- Interface: UHS-II
- Standard: SD 4.0
- Speed Class: Class 10, V90
- Read Performance: up to 300MB/s
- Write Performance: up to 260MB/s
- Storage Temperature: -40°C to 85°C
- Operating Temperature: -25°C to 85°C
- Weather-Proofing: Yes
- Shock Resistance: 1000 G / 0.5 ms
- Vibration Resistance: 6.0667 GRMS (20-2000 Hz)
- Weight: Approx. 1.8g
- Dimensions (WxHxD): 32 x 24 x 2.1mm
- Warranty: 5 Years
These are impressive specifications for sure, although I do wish Acer made a 512 GB version of this memory card. With all modern digital cameras having crazy resolution, as well as the push towards high-resolution 4K / 8K video, it seems like 256 GB is starting to look a bit on the smaller side.
For more information about this card, see Acer’s product page.
Compatibility
Unlike UHS-I memory cards that work on any camera, UHS-II is designed to only work on cameras and computers that can support the new standard and faster speeds. While UHS-II is supposed to be backward-compatible with UHS-I memory card readers, I previously had some serious issues with slow performance, as well as data corruption issues when using UHS-II cards on UHS-I readers. Ideally, every device that reads and writes to these cards should be fully UHS-II compatible. This way, you are getting the fastest performance while providing a more consistent experience. Make sure that your camera supports UHS-II SDXC cards natively, and if you don’t have a modern SD card reader, it might be time to swap that out as well.
While testing this card, I tried out a few memory card readers, adapters, and cables to see which combination would yield the best performance. To my surprise, one of the USB Type-A to USB Type-C adapters that was rated for 5 Gbit throughput turned out to be a pretty serious bottleneck, slowing both the read and write speeds of the card to below 50 MB/sec. Once I swapped it out with a better cable, the performance went back up to the expected range. This shows how important it becomes to keep the whole ecosystem updated and compatible, or you could miss out on the real performance benefits of a UHS-II memory card.
Performance
By now, you probably already know that manufacturers typically list their maximum speed specs based on their potential in very specific conditions. The read / write speeds are often based on sequential read / write operations, which are often not representative of real conditions. This is why memory cards rarely ever match their advertised performance in real life. Let’s take a look at how the Acer SC900 performed both in terms of read and write performance when using the AJA System Test (4 GB size chunks):
As you can see, the read speed of the memory card reached around 260 MB/sec. That’s simply excellent performance, despite the fact that it was not able to reach the advertised 300 MB/sec. Write speed varied between 150 and 160 MB/sec, which is also not bad, although it is certainly well below its maximum potential of 260 MB/sec.
Considering that every benchmark software performs differently depending on how it runs and measures disk performance, I decided to try out the Disk Speed Test software by Blackmagicdesign. Here is the result:
Although read performance remained about the same, the write performance of the card went up quite a bit to around 209 MB/sec. That’s much better!
Once again, keep in mind that the memory card’s advertised speed is based on its maximum potential under ideal scenarios. It is normal for a card to get significantly slower speeds in real-life scenarios. It is also important to note that transfer speeds can vary by media type/format – you will get faster read and write speeds when transferring large video files when compared to smaller images.
Summary
Based on my experience with the card, the Acer SC900 appears to be a great performer for anyone looking for a fast and reliable UHS-II SD card – I would not hesitate to recommend it for both photography and videography needs. Although I previously did not have any experience with Acer’s storage products, I was pleasantly surprised by this product’s performance, as well as its reliability in the field. I will now have to check out other Acer storage products to see what else might be of interest to our readers!
Where to Buy
The Acer SC900 UHS-II SDXC cards can be purchased through Amazon. The price varies from $69.99 to $199.99 depending on what size you choose.
Acer SC900 SDXC UHS-II Memory Card
- Build Quality
- Performance
- Weather Proofing
- Value
Photography Life Overall Rating
