Lexar CompactFlash FireWire 800 Card Reader RW034-001 by LEXAR MEDIA INC
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List Price: Category: CE See more digital camera details and other models |
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Digital camera reviews of Lexar CompactFlash FireWire 800 Card Reader RW034-001
Digital camera Review: Drinking from the fire hose
Summary: 5 Stars
This thing absolutely does not mess around. Speed is fairly close to what my laptop's hard drive can write at.
FYI, if you don't have a 9-pin FW800 port, you can use an adapter. It will slow down to FW400 speeds, but frankly that's probably faster than your card can deliver anyway.
Digital camera Review: Exactly what I needed!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
I had debated for some time about purchasing a card reader. (note: have Mac Pro, which means no internal card reader and already has FW ports) I had a USB "stick" type reader that I had purchased in China two years ago. When I came in from shooting an event with 1500 or more pictures, it would be literally hours for the photos to finish downloading (in RAW). I shot a Little League tournament over the weekend had 1400 images sitting on an Extreme III card, popped it in just to see, the entire thing was done in 16 minutes!!! 16 minutes!!! It has just taken more than 2.5 hours with the crappy USB reader.
There's no doubt this is worth every penny and I'm sure to be getting another so I can download from 2 cards after shooting a wedding or other all day event. I don't have any UDMA cards yet, but if they perform like this I'll be quite happy.
Recommended.
Digital camera Review: Excellent product, and boy is it FAST!
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this at Amazon to mate up with my new Lexar Pro UDMA 8GB CF card. The reviews here were mixed, so I had a wee bit of trepidation about spending over $60 for a simple reader. I am happy to say that my misgivings were unjustified. This is a great product.
The unit itself IS a little cheap looking, but it works as advertised, and is the fastest reader I've ever seen! My first test, downloading 2.9GB of RAW and JPEG pictures just taken with my new Canon 50D, wouldn't even allow me to go get a cup of coffee before finishing! My old USB method would have allowed me not only to get a cup, but to finish it before that amount of data completed its download.
Impressive that Lexar INCLUDES not one, but two Firewire 800 cables with the unit. One is bout 36 inches; the other is a six-inch shorty.
Others who commented about the card release button feeling "sticky" are somewhat correct. It DOES feel a little tight, but I suspect that those who have had a problem with it are probably being a bit aggressive.
I am always very careful with CF cards due to their pin structure, and I don't think that this unit will have a problem if you handle it with care while only pushing the eject button slowly, and only as much as needed to get the card out far enough to retrieve.
A final note that I was lucky to have purchased the Lexar 8GB UDMA PRO card at B&H while it still had a $80 rebate offer. It's now expired, but I suspect that UDMA card prices will fall soon, and that makes this reader an absolute MUST if you're loading up with pics or video.
VERY happy with this purchase! Five stars.
UPDATE: Unlike other reviews here, I have daisy-chained this reader with my Firewire800 G-Drive Hard Disk without issue. I have also put it in a mix with Firewire400 peripherals and also without issue. On my Mac with OSX 10.6 (Snow Leopard) the icon for the reader pops up no matter where I attach the reader, either directly to a FW800 port, OR in a chain. No issues at all!
Digital camera Review: Excellent transfer speed - hassle to use
Summary: 4 Stars
I got this gadget to use with my FireWire 800 enabled iMac. The device works wonders for quick transfers of my pictures from the CF cards to the computer. It comes with an additional FireWire socket that you might use for cascading devices or to interconnect another FireWire device (e.g. an external storage) if there is only one FireWire socket on your computer. The reader is delivered with two FireWire cables, a longer one and a very short one, for interconnects. Moreover, the case is provided with lateral indentations that allow stacking similar devices, one over another.
What I don't like: Quite cheap-like appearance and build (low quality plastic). The device is very light and the FireWire cable quite rigid, thus I always have problems convincing the card reader to lay flat on the table. Moreover, cards are problematic to insert and remove. You have to press hard on the card and wait a bit for the blue lamp to lit. This is the signal that card was well inserted.
When removing, pressing the eject button does not push the CF card too much outside the case so you need strong nails (or thin fingers) to pick it and drag it out of the device.
I highly recommended it for its transfer speed, but you might also want to look for a similar Sandisk product like the SanDisk 4 GB Extreme IV CF Card with FireWire Reader Bundle which makes a good offer for the combo.
Have a great day.
12/28/2008
Digital camera Review: FAST - Uses the newer FireWire800 interface
Summary: 5 Stars
I was tired of waiting an hour or more to download pictures and HD videos from my 16GB CF card using a USB reader.
With this FireWire 800 reader, I can download the entire card within only a few minutes.
The only Issue I had was caused by my own ignorance, a Firewire 800 interface is not the same as the old Firewire 1394 interfaces.
It uses a new type of connector. You should research this before purchasing. (wikipedia.org has a good overview.) I had to subsequently order and wait for the PCI-Express 1x Firewire 800 card to come in before I could use the reader.
PS: It draws all of it's power through the Firewire interface and does not use any external power source.