Frank-Provorecently compared the performance of Sony's first-party Memory Stick products against SanDisk's third-party products. Normally, we wouldn't find such a comparison noteworthy, but in this case the results were absolutely astonishing.
They compared the 512MB and 1GB models from both companies head-to-head in transfer speed tests, and in all cases, SanDisk's Memory Sticks significantly outperformed Sony's.
It wasn't even close–It took 3 minutes, 17 seconds to transfer a 769MB file onto the SanDisk 1GB MS Pro Duo, and 7 minutes to transfer the same file onto a Sony 1GB MS Pro Duo High-Speed. The SanDisk did the task in half the time!
Obviously, these speed tests won't matter much if all you're doing is playing games on your PSP. But, for anyone using the PSP to play video and music files, this is big news.
Really big news, when you consider that SanDisk's Memory Stick products cost half as much as Sony's do. Online shops have been selling 1GB sticks for as low as $100 recently, while a 1GB Sony stick still retails for upwards of $200.