Normally I try to start a post with some fancy schmancy intro, but this time I’ll go straight to the point. Previously I had done some benchmark testing on Nseries devices with built-in memory or others using memory cards. These test revealed that some improvements had be done when it comes to data transfer via USB. For example: the same 4GB Sandisk microUSB card scored: 0.8MB/s in the N76, while the card reader managed to squeeze almost 11MB/s out of the same card. No matter if the device is using internal memory (N81 8GB) or card slot (N76) they perform very similar. Equipped with the Nokia N800, a Sandisk 4GB and 8GB microSD cards using microSD-to-SD adapter I wanted to find out how fast Nokia’s Internet Tablet really is. And how do the Nseries tablets compare to Nseries phones?

Test were down with HDTach.

1a)Sandisk MicroSD 8GB via card reader over USB 2.0 (Quick bench): 19.7 MB/s

Random Access: 1.9ms

CPU Utilization: 0% (+/-2%)

Average Read: 19.3MB/s

1b) Sandisk MicroSD 4GB via card reader over USB 2.0 (Quick bench): 10.7 MB/s

Random Access: 1.1ms

CPU Utilization: 4% (+/-2%)

Average Read: 10.6MB/s

2a) Nokia N800+ Sandisk MicroSD 8GB over USB 2.0 (Quick bench): 4.9 MB/s

Random Access: 3.2ms

CPU Utilization: 0% (+/-2%)

Average Read: 4.8MB/s

2b) Nokia N800 + Sandisk MicroSD 4GB over USB 2.0 (Quick bench): 5.1 MB/s

Random Access: 2.3ms

CPU Utilization: 0% (+/-2%)

Average Read: 4.9MB/s

To give you idea how the N81 8GB and N76 performed here are the results from previous test:

Nokia N81 8GB (Quick bench):0.8 MB/s

Nokia N76 + Sandisk MicroSD 4GB (Quick bench):0.8 MB/s

Conclusion

As you can see the N800 Internet Tablet performs quite well transferring at speeds around 5MB/s which big improvement over their Nseries Smartphone siblings. The N810 is based on the same hardware as the N800 so it should perform similar. Dedicated Card readers still easily outperform the Nseries. Looking at these results we can conclude that:

1)The N8XX Internet Tablets transfer data via USB cable a lot faster than their Phone Equipped siblings.

2)The Sandisk MicroSD 8GB is faster than the 4GB version, but in the N800 it doesn’t make any difference.

The USB transfer rate on the N800 is good enough for average use, but it would be ideal if Nokia could raise the transfer rate to about 20MB/s. I highly recommend the Sandisk 8GB microSDHC card with its ultra fast and small card reader which apparently is faster than the 4GB version. The Sandisk 8GB version can be bought online at MobyMemory.