Sandisk Announces 16GB and 32GB SD Cards

While I was visiting the Philips booth during CES, one of the presenters said SD cards with higher capacities were going to be announced this year, and it looks like SanDisk did just that last week during PMA 08 in Las Vegas.

Why should you care? Two reasons come to mind: more megapixels and HD content.

In case you haven't noticed, 10- to 12-megapixel resolution digital cameras are available to consumers at very low prices these days. More megapixels means you need more storage space, even if you don't always take pictures at the highest resolution. Another feature that's going to be big this year in digital cameras is HD video capture. Again, HD content means you need more storage.

The highest capacity SD card today holds 8GB, so buying a 32GB card means you don't have to switch between multiple cards when you're recording. Let's Go Digital says the 32GB SD card will be able to store 8,000 high-resolution pictures or up to 40 hours of video. The card supports read/write speeds of 15MB per second and will be available in April for $349. The site says a 16GB will also be available for $180 and might be available worldwide in March. Pretty exciting stuff.