How to use SD cards in a Memory Stick Device

Anyone who has purchased a Sony product knows the dilemma. The wonderful new Sony device you just purchased requires another investment by way of requiring you to purchase Sony's own Memory Stick Media.

Memory stick media is more expensive than its SD (Secure Digital) counterpart and it only works on the Sony devices so what is a technophile to do?

In the past, consumers were forced to buy the expensive memory stick media and keep a batch of memory stick cards alongside their SD cards but now there is relatively inexpensive solution. This is a micro SD to memory stick pro duo adapter.

This adapter basically takes a standard Micro SD card (also known as a transflash card) and allows you to use it in a Memory stick duo device.

The micro SD card itself works the same as the Memory Stick card with the primary difference being that the Sony cards have their Magic Gate digital rights management (DRM) built in. Because the micro SD cards do not have this feature... they generally will not work for Sony MP3 players that require this for protected music (though it should be fine for unprotected music).

Apart from the music players, this adapter works perfectly for most other Sony products like Digital Cameras, PSP, Video recorders, etc.

The adapter itself costs about $8 dollars from ebay (including shipping) (see the links on the side). A 2 Gb micro SD card typically costs about $10-15 (see the Amazon.com links below to the right) so your total cost for a 2gb of memory would be between $18-23. A 2gb Sony memory stick duo card typically is sale priced between $20-30 so you actually save money even on your first purchase of the adapter!

When you want more capacity you simply buy another 2 Gb micro SD card for around $10 and use it in the adapter and your savings are now about 50% compared to buying another 2Gb memory stick card!

The beauty of using Micro SD is that they can also be used in devices that require SD cards using another adapter. The micro SD also fits directly into most (non Sony) cell phones so you know that you can always use the micro SD card even if you decide to get rid of your Sony device.

I have tested this product using 3 different micro SD cards on a Sony Cybershot H7 digital camera. My reference for this comparison was a 1Gb genuine Sony Memory stick pro duo card and a 4Gb Lexar memory stick pro duo card. The Micro SD cards that I used were a 2Gb Kingston, a 1Gb A-data. In terms of read and write times, there was no noticeable difference in performance between the real Memory stick duo cards and the micro SD cards used with the adapter. I also tried capturing video with my Sony H7 and there was no difference in performance.

I also tried the adpater in a Sony Cybershot DSC S730 and a Sony PSP and it worked flawlessly in both of these devices as well.

The Pro duo adapter also claims that High Capacity (HC) Micro SD cards can be used so the maximum capacity can be anywhere from 4gb to 8Gb. I have not been able to test these claims so this review applies to Micro SD cards of 2gb and less.

The micro SD to Memory Stick Pro Duo adapter is a great way to be able to use relatively more common and significantly cheaper micro Sd cards on devices that require Sony Memory stick media. It tends to work flawlessly on most Sony devices that don't require Magic gate DRM which means most Sony devices with the exception of Mp3 players that only play DRM music.