Which microSD/SDHC cards are best for Zoom H1?

August 16, 2012 12:38 PM

Which microSD/SDHC cards are best for Zoom H1?: I have a Zoom H1, and plan to get a few more microSD/SDHC cards for it. Are there any rankings, rules-of-thumb, opinions or other considerations wrt best choices?

They list the following microSD/SDHC cards as compatible.
Previously/Related, sort of: 1, 2, 3, 4.
Bonus question: When I bought the H1, it looked like it was nearing the end of its support cycle. However, I see they now have a firmware upgrade to 2.00 -- any reasons, cautions, etc. to not blithely upgrade? (ie. any way to back out, forums, etc)

posted by Tuesday After Lunch to Technology (4 answers total)

Best answer: Looks like they're all SDHC class 4 or above so you should be safe with most cards out on the market. The class rating defines the minimum sequential write speed (which is important when recording lots of data such as audio or video) so the higher the class rating, the better the minimum write speed (Class 6 and Class 10 are probably more common these days than class 4).

As long as you select a card that is class 4 or higher and has the SDHC logo you should be fine (even if it's not on the supported list you linked). One word of caution, newer cards may be SDXC format (if the density is greater than 32GB then it must be SDXC,) and some card readers (such as the H1) may not be able to recognize it. Newer readers can recognize older formats but not the other way around so I'd stick with cards that have the SDHC logo.
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:10 PM on August 16, 2012

Yep, just get the class 4 or better and you're good. SanDisk is my go-to brand for flash media, and Kingston's okay too.
posted by echo target at 1:29 PM on August 16, 2012

Best answer: Also Sandisk and Toshiba use their own components (controller and/or NAND flash) so if it were me I'd stick with either of those for best technical support in case something doesn't play well with the H1 but most of the time it either works or it doesn't (so from that point of view the more well known companies should have better customer support setups for handling returns etc).

I believe the rest of the companies on that list are either private labelling someone elses cards or are 3rd party manufacturers (meaning they purchase NAND flash die and a seperate flash controller to package together as microSD cards). Because of the small size, microSD is a packaged card and not assembled on PCB so there's fewer companies that actually manufacture it themselves. I've never heard of Elecom for what it's worth but the rest of the companies are reasonably well known in the industry.
posted by TwoWordReview at 1:36 PM on August 16, 2012

Response by poster: Much thanks -- quality answers all. I'm going to belatedly mark this "resolved", and maybe navigate the "best answers" as best I can. But all answers greatly appreciated.
posted by Tuesday After Lunch at 1:35 PM on August 21, 2012