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It features a pop up design which Lexar says is to stop dust getting onto the contacts… Hold on, dusty contacts. For the record it’s a duel card reader accepting all types of SD and Compact Flash cards. OK, I admit it’s hard to get excited about a card reader and the Lexar isn’t going to change that fact. Finally at £25 it’s sits nicely in the middle of the price range for card readers. Next was the build quality, which from previous experience of Lexar readers I hoped would be excellent. First up it’s a true USB 3 reader, so it should be fast. There’s loads of card readers on the market, but the Lexar caught my eye for a couple of reasons. I really wanted to test the speed claims for USB 3 so I bought a Lexar USB 3 card reader, but before I get to the speed test, lets take a closer look at what I bought.
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Now the important words in that last sentence were “on paper" and “up to” because as the saying goes… results may vary. So what’s changed? Well my new PC is fitted with the a couple of USB 3 sockets and on paper USB 3 is up to 10 times faster then USB 2 which powers my existing card readers. Both have been great, but all of a sudden they’re out of date! For the past few years I’ve been using either the internal card reader fitted to my PC or an external Compact Flash card reader. Hopefully every photographer reading this already knows that the best and fastest way to get your images from a memory card to your computer is via a card reader.
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