84 PCWorld SEPTEMBER 2020FEATURE YOUR LAPTOP’S SD CARD READER
For the Xenia 15, we couldn’t find
anything other than that it’s a RealTek card
reader on USB 3.0. Because USB 3.0 can
reach speeds of 5Gbps or 625MBps on
paper, we know it’s not the USB 3.0
interface. We can only assume that the
Xenia 15 uses a UHS-I reader rated for
104MBps transfer speeds.
We make that assumption because clearly
the Aero 17 on USB 3.0 with its RealTek UHS-II
reader can easily reach 262MBps read
speeds. Our control, the SanDisk Extreme Pro
UHS-II reader, also can hit a decent 246MBps
read speed.
The winner of this, although not by the
margin you’d hope for, is the Dell XPS 15
9500, with its UHS-III-rated RealTek card
reader hooked up to the PCIe bus. The XPS
15 9500 has a decent edge, but it’s likely
gated by the fact that we only have access to
a UHS-II card for our testing.LAPTOP SD SLOT
WRITE SPEEDS
Writing to the cards is slower for the XPS 15
and Aero 17 and largely a tie. The SanDisk
Extreme Pro card reader also does a fine job.
Meanwhile, the G5 15 SE and Xenia 15 are far,
far behind the pack.REAL-WORLD TESTS
Writing to an SD card from a laptop isn’t
something most people do. The most
common method is to shoot photos or video
to an SD card and then copy the contents to
your laptop for editing in the field.
To simulate that we took a folder of 266
JPEG and RAW files totaling 3.4GB, shot with
a Canon EOS 5D Mark IV. We manually timed
how long it took to copy the files to the
Windows desktop of each laptop. We
performed the test three times, with rebootsCopy 266 JPEG+RAW
to Laptop SSD
SecondsSHORTER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCEDell XPS 15 9500UHS-III x1 PCIeGigabyte Aero 17UHS-III USB 3.0SanDisk ExtremPro e
UHS-III Reader USB 3.0
XPG Xenia 15USB 3.0Dell G5 SE 15USB 2.0 96.819.44717.716Dell XPS 15 9500UHS-III x1 PCIeGigabyte Aero 17UHS-III USB 3.0SanDisk ExtremPro e
UHS-III Reader USB 3.0
XPG Xenia 15USB 3.0Dell G5 SE 15USB 2.0CrystalDiskMark 7 Seq.
Write (MBps)LONGER BARS INDICATE BETTER PERFORMANCE217204.52168125.6