Hey folks, Valkor here. At CES Unveiled 2012 over in NYC, I was introduced to quite a few new companies whose products have never entered the Val-Cave. One company in particular is a newly formed partnership between Monster (maker of the high performance cables and accessories) and SDJ Technologies (an innovator in flash technologies). Together they've become "Monster Digital" and their first product out the gate – Monster Digital SD and MicroSD Flash Cards. And these aren't ordinary flash cards, they offer up some serious protection.
On the outside, the Monster Digital SD card looks the same size as your standard SD card. But that's where the differences stop because Monster Digital offers up something more in terms of protecting your data. Built to Military Standards, these SD cards are made to survive during even the harshest elements that an SD card could possibly go through – vibration, shock, heat, water, magnetic, cold, bending and then some. The SD cards come in five sizes – 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, and 256. While the MicroSD cards get three – 4, 8, 16. So with an SD card built to last, it's only fair that I put it through tests that it was meant to survive (i.e. I dropped it from a 7ft drop, with a ricochet off a table, gave it ten seconds in boiling water, one minute in the freezer, and accidentally on purposed stepped on it).
Afterwards I had a glass of red wine because my nerves were shot; stupid me I forget that I had images and video on the card that I had yet to process, so in my mind it was all lost. However once I placed the card in the SD reader…
The Bang:
IT'S ALIVE!! That sweet, sweet sound of Window's default beep and the pop-up that would let me access my data was like waking up from a nightmare only to realize I was safe and cozy in my bed. Opening up VuePrint, I ran a slideshow of my images and all appeared with no issue – same goes for the video. I tested transfer rates using a 1.2GB file which took 3min 35sec to transfer on and 2min 15sec to transfer off, nice speeds especially if you need to grab some data on the go. Overall your data is in some remarkably good hands with Monster Digital.
The Slack:
A lot of folks will be scratchin their noggins wondering why they should invest in such a product. It's not a bad investment, especially if you have data that you want protected.
In the end, Monster Digital has proven itself to be a worthy contender in the SD market by going above and beyond quality, reliability and durability with their reinforced SD Cards. Maybe they're not for everyone, but it makes for a good investment because out of TOV 5 stars, I'm giving these bad boys a perfect score of 5 and it's been Valkor Tested, TOV Approved!