ProGrade Digital is rounding out their card reader lineup quite nicely to appeal to as many different types of user as possible. They’re now up to four card readers, covering CFast+UHS-II SD, CompactFlash+UHS-II SD, dual UHS-II microSD cards and now dual UHS-II SD cards. The new card reader is priced at $79.99, same as the other three, and is available now.
The new dual SD card reader, as well as the three previous card readers, is a USB 3.1 Gen 2 card reader, offering transfer speeds up to 10Gb/sec (1.25GB/sec). Of course, this is mostly theoretical, as memory cards typically don’t quite reach those transfer speeds (yet). But it means that your card reader is not going to be the bottleneck when copying over your cards.
USB 3.1, Gen. 2 interface provides transfer speed of up to 10Gb/s (25GB/s)Supports concurrent maximum speed data transfer from cards in both slotsCompatible with UHS-I/UHS-IILED indicator for data transfer activityPortable and compactMagnetized bottom connects reader to laptopIncludes one metal mounting plateIncludes two 18” connection cables: one Type A to Type C and one Type C to Type CCompatible with Mac OS X 10.6 or later; Windows 10Backwards compatible with USB 3.0 devicesDimensions: 70.8 mm x 70.8 mm x 18 mm2-year warranty
But with two other ProGrade card readers supporting SD cards, why would we want one that contains two SD slots? Well, one of the big benefits of this dual SD card reader, ProGrade says, is that you can get full speed transfer from both slots simultaneously (the dual UHS-II microSD card reader works the same way, too). So, if you’ve come home with a lot of cards filled with footage & photos to unload, you can do two at a time and get everything transferred over twice as quickly. But it also makes SD to SD backups easy in the field as the dual SD card reader can be plugged straight into Android mobile devices (we’ll have more on this coming in a future post). You can just fire up an app and duplicate the contents of one card over to the other in very little time at all. A handy feature for location backups, given how many cameras seem to be popping up without dual card slots these days, or for those shooting video where they don’t have the option to save out two cards simultaneously. The new ProGrade Digital dual SD card reader is available now for $79.99 (same price as ProGrade’s other readers) and has already begun shipping. It is compatible with both Mac and Windows (and Android) and comes with Type-C to Type-C and Type-C to Type-A USB cables. It is backwards compatible with USB3.1 Gen 1 (otherwise known as USB3.0). The next logical card reader release will be CFexpress/XQD. But given that ProGrade won’t be making XQD cards and there’s no word from camera manufacturers when they’ll start supporting CFexpress, we might have to wait a little while for that one.
