Kodak is a name that has its roots stretching back more than 130 years. Although this is long before the advent of modern digital photography, they did not let it simply pass them by: they invented one of the first megapixel camera sensors, and they also produced the first commercially-available DSLRs, the DCS-100, which was released in 1991. And, while they have largely exited the camera business, their name is still well associated with photography today.
While I don’t associate Kodak with making microSD cards (or flash memory in general), they turned up fairly frequently while browsing through microSD cards on AliExpress. I initially only purchased one — but after making the decision to try to test three of each model, I went back and purchased two more.
On the performance front: with the exception of sample #1’s sequential read speeds, all measurements were above average. Here’s how things shook out:
- Sequential read: Sample #1’s sequential read speeds were significantly slower than the other two samples, coming in at the 25th percentile (as of the time of this writing). The other two samples came in at the 56th and 59th percentile.
- Sequential write: All three samples came in pretty close to each other, scoring between the 60th and 69th percentile (nice).
- Random read: Sample #1’s random read speeds were significantly faster than the other two samples, coming in at the 81st percentile. The other two samples came in at the 52nd and 55th percentiles.
- Random write: Sample #1’s random write speeds were a little higher than the other two samples, coming in at the 75th percentile. The other two samples came in at the 62nd and 66th percentiles.
These cards carry the Class 10, U3, V30, and A1 markings. All measurements were good enough to qualify for the Class 10, U3, and V30 markings; however, only sample #1 got good enough scores to qualify for the A1 marking. However, I’ll throw in my standard disclaimer: my testing methods do not align with those prescribed by the SD standard; it’s possible that they would have done better had they been tested under proper conditions. (And samples #2 and #3 were close enough that this might actually be true.)
On the endurance front:
Sample #1’s first error occurred during round 2,518.1 It also experienced a couple of bit-flip errors affecting two sectors during round 3,903. It finally started experiencing a large number of data loss errors starting in round 4,215; by the end of round 4,241, those errors had affected over 50% of the sectors on the device. The graph for this card looks pretty boring, but here it is anyway:
- Samples #2’s first error was a four-sector wide address decoding error during round 219. It has survived 5,258 read/write cycles in total so far.
- Sample #3’s first error was a four-sector wide address decoding error that occurred during round 729. It has also survived 5,331 read/write cycles so far.
Overall? I think I’d have to say that these cards are just a little above average in terms of performance. And although things are looking good so far in terms of endurance, it’s unfortunately too soon to say how they will ultimately compare. There are better options out there, but I’d have to say that this is not a terrible card.
1This error may have been related to the fact that I pulled it from its reader during testing so that I could read the registers off of it with the Realtek reader. However, my program was well into the readback portion of the round when I pulled it — and section 4.3.3 of the SD Physical Layer Specification says that “[t]he read operation from SD memory card may be interrupted by turning the power off. The SD Memory Card ensures that data is not destroyed during all the conditions except write or erase operations issued by the host even in the event of sudden shut down or removal.” Given that my program was only issuing read operations, any data in the card’s cache should have long since been written out to flash. Regardless, the symptoms do seem to be consistent with a cached write that was only partially flushed.
June 16, 2025 (current number of read/write cycles is updated automatically every hour)