PNY vs SanDisk..

I have had SD cards from Kingston, Patriot, PNY, Sandisk &Transcend over the years. None have failed (maybe I'm lucky). My rule of thumb for today's prices, never pay more than $1 per Gig.

In case anyone cares. I just went through this. I bought two 128 PNY Elite 95 meg/s and two 64 Sandisk Extreme Pro 95 meg/sec. On a Core i7 with a USB 3 UHS-1 reader the PNY was sligthly faster on average at around 55 meg/s. The Sandisk was 47 meg/s.

MuahMan wrote in post #16709076
In case anyone cares. I just went through this. I bought two 128 PNY Elite 95 meg/s and two 64 Sandisk Extreme Pro 95 meg/sec. On a Core i7 with a USB 3 UHS-1 reader the PNY was sligthly faster on average at around 55 meg/s. The Sandisk was 47 meg/s.

Read or write speed? Honestly in camera buffer clearing is all I care about.

Keyan wrote in post #16711832
Read or write speed? Honestly in camera buffer clearing is all I care about.

Canon has been notorious for not taking the speed of the SD card interface seriously, with their cameras being unable to take advantage of the speed available in the fastest cards. Did they change that with the 70D?

Bearmann wrote in post #16706513
I should have said may sell off the lower end cards because I have no idea what Sandisk actually does. Somewhat similar to Green Giant green beans versus store branded green beans. They may have come off the same farm, but are not necessarily the same quality, but they may be the same quality. You just don't know. The buyer (store branded) would specify what quality they want and are willing to pay for.

That is a better way to state it, but it should also be pointed out that you (I assume) have no idea what PNY actually does, either.

There are several suppliers of flash memory IC's, so buying rejects from Sandisk is far from the only option for competitors. Plus, Sandisk is generally able to command a higher price due to their brand name. This creates room for competitors to offer equal quality at a lower price as well, assuming they are willing to accept a lower margin than Sandisk enjoys. All this to say that binning may have nothing to do with PNY (or Kingston or Transcend or ... ) offering SD cards at a lower price than Sandisk.

I have direct experience with CMOS IC design and production, so I know about so-called "binning". It should be pointed out that this sorting is also done at the top, not just at the bottom. IOW, screening out parts that EXCEED performance specifications for special applications. E.g. a CMOS FAB process that is spec'ed for parts that work over the -40 to +85 C temperature range. These can (and sometimes are) sorted to find parts that operate to spec at -55 C for applications in the arctic. Obviously, doing this is costly AND it skews the curve for the remaining parts.

As someone else pointed out, "binned" parts generally work functionally, they are perhaps just slower than the specification for the parts, hence they are screened out and sold off at a lower price.