HP 32gb SDHC Flash Memory Card Class 10 - 15 MB/s - $19.91 Amazon prime

I recently purchased this HP CG790A-AZ 32 GB Flash Memory Card Class 10 SDHC [amazon.com], mostly because it is budget-priced (similar class-10 32GB card from Sandisk would cost nearly twice as much). To my surprise, this HP card turns out to be faster than all my other class-10 cards.

I used a benchmark program called "H2testw v1.4" to find out the write speed for large (1GB) files. This is essentially the same as the sequential-write speed used for SD card speed ratings. To qualify as a class-10 card, the card must be able to sustain sequential-write speed of 10MB/s.

Here are the results for all my class-10 SDHC cards:
- HP CG790A [amazon.com] : 15.1MB/s
- Transcend TS16GSDHC10E [amazon.com] : 14.6MB/s
- PNY P-SDHC16G10 [amazon.com] : 13.6MB/s
- Kingston SD10G2/16GB [amazon.com]: 10.7MB/s
- Wintec Filemate 3FMSD32GBC10-R [amazon.com]: 10.2MB/s
(See the chart I uploaded to 'Customer Images')

For completeness sake, I also benchmarked this HP card using other programs, including "Flash Memory Toolkit v2.0" and "CrystalDiskMark 3.01". The results are even more impressive (see 'Customer Images' section for details). The HP card delivered excellent write speed for both large and small files, while all other cards performed poorly for smaller files.

Of course, the REAL benchmark needs to be done in the actual application. For that, I inserted each card in my Canon Rebel T1i, set it to save both RAW and JPEG formats, then took 10 consecutive shots in burst mode. Again, the HP card is the fastest, taking only 16.7s to save all 250MB of data. In contrast, the slowest card (Wintec Filemate) took 28.3s to finish.

Bottom Line:
This HP SDHC card, despite of its low cost (I picked "Amazon Frustration Free Packaging"), is actually the fastest among all class-10 cards I have tested. That makes it the best deal in my book.

[Update on June 26, 2012]
I purchased another HP 32GB SDHC card, because the current price (66 cents per GB) is just too good to pass up. The read/write speed of the second card is identical to that of the first one. So the quality is consistent.