Atech Pro-9 & Pro-Gear Duo

If you own a digital camera, I'm sure you enjoy its ease of use where you can simply plug your camera into the computer and upload your photos. You no longer have to take them down to the local camera store and get them developed which costs a lot of money. However, the process of uploading the images from your camera’s memory card to your computer can be much easier if you have a memory card reader. Memory card readers generally accept a wide range of memory card formats, so all you have to do is insert your card into the reader and then bang, it’s uploading to your computer. Using a memory card reader rather than simply plugging your camera into a USB port, will save on your cameras battery life, save time, and save hassle. Memory card readers generally upload faster than straight from a digital camera. The memory card readers in which we will be examining in this review are Atech Flash Technology’s Pro-9 and Pro-Gear Duo.

About Atech Flash Technology:

Atech Flash Technology, Inc
Develops, manufactures and markets innovative flash multimedia computer add-on hardware.

Solution provider for a wide range of applications, from desktop to the enterprise to consumer electronics. We are committed to customer satisfaction.

This commitment, along with our focus on innovation in technology and quality in design, provides the foundation for our success.

Features of Pro-9:

The Pro-9 is a memory card reader/writer that is compatible with many different memory card formats and implements the latest in USB technology. The memory card formats supported by the Pro-9 are Compact Flash Type I/II, Microdrive, Multimedia, Secure Digital, Smart Media, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO, and the Memory Stick MagicGate xD-Picture Card. Implementing the latest in USB technology, USB2.0, is important to having a device which can read and write to the memory card at 480MB/s and also be plug and play compatible.

Features of Pro-Gear Duo:

Since the Pro-Gear Duo is internal and external, it is very important for the memory card reader to be portable, but have no worries as it can easily fit into your pocket. The device can be external, plugging into any USB port, or internal if you plug it into its 3.5” docking station. On the front of the docking station, Atech has added a Mini-1394 firewire port and a USB2.0 port making it easier for you to plug extra devices into your computer. The Pro-Gear Duo supports all of the same memory card formats as the Pro-9.

Contents:

Pro-Gear Duo

1 x Card Reader
1 x Docking Station
1 x External USB A to mini Cable
1 x Internal USB Cable
1 x Internal IEEE 1394 Cable
1 x Setup Disk
1 x User's Manual

Pro-9

1 x PRO-9 Reader Unit
1 x Internal USB Cable
1 x Internal FireWire Cable
1 x External USB Cable
1 x PRO-9 Setup CD
1 x User's Manual

Installation:

Installation of both devices is fairly simple and straightforward. For the Pro-Gear Duo, insert the docking station into an available 3.5” drive bay. You then connect the internal USB cables and internal firewire cables to the back of the docking station you just installed. Plug the other ends of the wires into your motherboard’s pin headers; you may need to adjust the alignment of the pins depending upon your motherboard setup. Once that is done, installation is complete. Now you can insert your card reader into the docking station, or just plug it into a USB port if you bring the card reader to a computer which doesn’t offer a docking station. Installation for the Pro-9 is quite similar; it just doesn’t offer a docking station. If you wish to use the Pro-9 externally, simply use the external USB cable and hook it up to an external USB port. On the other hand, if you wish to install it internally you just use the internal USB cable and wire it up to your motherboard’s USB pin headers. It is very nice; all the power required for the device to operate is powered via USB so there is no need for an external power source.

Performance:

To test the performance of these two devices, we simply hooked them up externally to one of our systems. We used SiSoftware Sandra’s Removable Storage/Flash Benchmark Module and compared the two devices with a Transcend Internal 6 in 1 card reader. The memory card we used on all three devices for testing was a 64MB Sony Memory Stick. Below are the results.

As you can see, the results were VERY close which makes it very hard for us to declare a winner for performance. However, due to the external support and ease of use, these Atech Cards are much better then the Transcend.

Conclusion:

What we looked at today, were two astounding memory card readers. In terms of performance, they are very close together; however, we have drawn up two conclusions. If portability is your key concern and you will be transporting the device around a lot, we would recommend the Pro-Gear Duo since it’s smaller than the Pro-9. Secondly, if you are looking for just an internal or external memory card reader we would recommend the Atech Pro-9.