Top positive review
5.0 out of 5 starsSpeedy card reader
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 9 September 2023
I've come across WARRKY before, having one of their USB-C to HDMI cables. I like their aesthetic, good quality cable braiding and a focus on performance.
This card reader shares some of the quality of other products, although the plastic casing isn't particularly high quality in this instance and the colour is more 'grey' than the picture would suggest.
Aesthetics aside, the reader has a total of 3 USB ports and 3 card slots. At a technical level is it essentially a USB 3.2 Gen1 4 port hub, with the 4th port wired to the card slots. It also implements a backwards compatible USB 2.1 hub for older devices under the covers. The card reading is implemented by a Genesys Logic chipset.
For cards, the USB3.2 Gen1 speed is potentially excessive, essentially the limitation will be the card itself, the interface speed of USB3.2 Gen1 is 5Gbps, which equates to 625MB/s. The fastest UHS-II SD cards peak at around 300MB/s. Although there is of course the possibly of reading multiple cards simultaneously, along with USB devices, thereby filling the available bandwidth.
I tested a couple of devices in the reader.
SanDisk Ultra USB3.0 32GB reported sequential read of 146MB/s and write of 54MB/s
SanDisk Extreme 64GB V30 A2 SD Card reported sequential read of 89MB/s and write of 85MB/s
Asides from synthetic benchmarks, everything feels snappy, even on drives and cards with many thousands of small files.
For myself, I don't need the extreme potential speeds offered by this device, however, having recently upgraded my PC I've made a conscious effort to ensure all attached hubs, readers and KVM offer a baseline of 5Gbps speed - so as to not introduce any bottlenecks when hubs are wired in series. This reader fits the bill nicely.
I've seen a few reviews unhappy with orientation of some of the ports, that is card and USB devices have to be inverted. I don't see this as an issue, I've had no problems inserting any card or devices into the reader.
If anything the included LED is a little gimmicky, it doesn't really serve any purpose. It is supposed to indicate power, recognition and reading - but it's an unnecessary feature and not particularly clear. If you insert a drive and it works, it works - I suspect if it didn't you would just reinsert it.
Pleased with this unit, will update review should longevity be an issue.