I need to buy an SD card for a new camera & a couple of flash/key drive for various storage purposes. Looking at them there seems to be a vast range in price, is there a performance difference between the cheaper ones & more expensive ones?

is there a performance difference between the cheaper ones & more expensive ones

Yes.Cards with faster read/write speeds are generally more expensive. For a camera I’d go for something like a Sandisk Extreme III or Ultra.

If you look around, and mobimemory.com is a good place, you can get flashdrive holders that an SD card just slots into, so you can use any card that’s handy, plus you just then stick it into any computer, without needing to carry around a card reader. I’ve got one, cost about four quid, and I’m going to get a couple more, you just carry them on your keyring. There’s a new format just been announced, too; SDXC, which will start at 32gb, and theoretically go up to 2Tb!

* Class 2: 2 MB/s – 13x
* Class 4: 4 MB/s – 26x
* Class 6: 6 MB/s – 40x

I’d be looking at class 4 for a camera and class 6 if it is that important to you. MyMemory are cheap.

Like Andy says they do things faster ie viewing, writing etc. I use Kingston Ultimate which are 120X. The cheapest I got one 2GB at, 12 months ago, was £16 on Amazon.

* Class 6: 6 MB/s – 40x

ie still dog slow 🙁
Sandisk Ex III are now 30MB/s

Scan disk Ex III is still a class 6 because it is minimum speed.

Class is a recognised standard, manufacturer’s claims are another matter… Especially if they are not specific about read vs write.

Also I wonder what speed the camera bottle necks it, probably about 10mbs on a good one? And usb about 3 reading?