SEPTEMBER 2020 PCWorld 85between runs to
remove OS caching
from equation. We
also manually
trimmed the laptop’s
internal SSDs before
testing was
conducted.
The results
largely mirror our
read tests using
CrystalDiskMark 7.
The higher-
performance card
readers all track very
closely, the Xenia 15
achieves an
acceptable 47 seconds, and the G5 15 SE
strolls past the finish line the next day.
Our last test created a nine-minute video
with the EOS 5D Mk IV, using its 4K video
setting. The camera uses the insanely
inefficient MJPEG codec at a 500Mbps bit
rate, which produced a whopping 34GB file.
As with our still image test, we take an
average of manually timed runs with reboots
in between.
With a file this large, we now see why
having a high-speed SD card reader is so
valuable. It takes a little over two minutes with
the XPS 15 9500 and Aero 17 to copy a 34GB
file to the desktop. The Xenia 15 takes about
five additional minutes to copy over. The Dell
and its USB 2.0-bound card reader takes a
painful 15 minutes to do the same task. And
remember: 34GB seems like a large file, but
that means 90GB of video files would takeCopy 34GB 4K MJPEG
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
919412145135155Content creators hate using external readers, but a fast USB 3.0 reader such as
this SanDisk Extreme Pro reader is probably faster than your laptop’s reader.