I am going to be taking a look at this Llano USB 3 multi-function card reader. Keep in mind that Llano did send me this device at no cost based on my collaboration terms, which means they have no say in the content of the video or anything else I produce. They were also not allowed to preview anything.
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| The box for the Llano USB 3.0 Multifunction Card Reader. |
Out of the box, the LCR1003B model comes with a set of instructions and a small lanyard to help keep track of it. The device itself features an aluminum alloy and ABS plastic case, giving it a reasonably solid feel in the hand.
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| The aluminum and ABS plastic body of the card reader. |
The main draw of this device is its connectivity. It has a standard USB-A port on one end and a USB-C port on the opposite side. Along the side, you will find slots for both standard SD and micro SD cards.
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| The USB-A side of the card reader. |
This is a UHS-I type card reader. Because of this, you are not going to get super fast transfer speeds if you are using UHS-II cards, but it does offer a lot of conveniences to make up for the speed cap.
UHS-I (Ultra High Speed Phase I) is a performance class for SD cards and readers that offers a theoretical maximum bus speed of 104 MB/s. UHS-II increases this theoretical limit to 312 MB/s using a second row of pins. When a UHS-II card is placed in a UHS-I reader, it will default back to UHS-I speeds. - This informative block was generated by Gemini Pro
One of the specific features advertised for this reader is dual card simultaneous reading. To test this out, I fully inserted both an SD card (a UHS-II card) and a micro SD card. The full sized SD card does not extent far at all into the card reader so don't be surprised by that.
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| Both drives successfully popping up on the computer screen at the same time. |
When I plugged the USB-A side directly into my computer, both drives popped up right away. That is a very good sign. I decided to try copying files over from both cards at the exact same time to see how the reader handles the bandwidth.
First, I started copying files from the SD card. It was hitting around 70 to 80 megabytes a second. Next, I started copying GoPro footage from the micro SD card simultaneously. With both transfers running, the micro SD card was moving at about 10 to 12 megabytes a second, while the main SD card hovered around 75 megabytes a second.
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| Two transfer windows running simultaneously, showing the split bandwidth. |
When I canceled the micro SD transfer to see if the SD card speed would increase, it went up into the 80s. Based on these results, it looks like this card reader is capped around 90 megabytes a second in total bandwidth.
Next, I wanted to test the USB-C port on the other side of the reader. This is where I ran into a clear limitation with the physical design.
When I tried to plug the USB-C port into my phone, the connector isn't long enough because I have a case on my phone. Obviously, you can take your case off to use it. If you do not want to remove your case every time you want to transfer files, you will need to get a USB-C extension cable or adapter of some sort.
Using an extension cable, the reader connected to my phone without any issues. I was able to transfer files directly to the phone. I'm not sure if it is a limitation of my phone or the card reader, but I wasn't able to use the dual transfer feature in this case.
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| The reader attached to a phone with a USB-C extension cable. |
Overall, this device offers a lot of functionality and features in a small package. While you are not going to get super fast UHS-II speeds, it is a decent result for what it is. The conveniences of having both USB-A and USB-C ports on one device are great, but you have to consider that the USB-C port is not going to work with every type of phone if it has a case on it.
If you keep these limitations in mind and maybe pick up a short extension cable to deal with that, you are going to get decent UHS-I type speeds and a lot of dual-card functionality out of this reader.
llano lCR1003B Multi-Card Reader:
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[EDITOR NOTE: The real-world assessment of UHS-I speeds capping around 90 MB/s in this test is entirely accurate. While the theoretical maximum for UHS-I is 104 MB/s, file system overhead and controller limits usually restrict actual file transfers to the 85 to 95 MB/s range.]