Official Website: http://www.r4sdhc.com

Much is written about these products on the official website and other sources - NDS-Gear are here to give a plain, short, simple review in layman's terms! Of course, the original feature list can still be found below our own review.

The R4 SDHC's interface is identical to the R4v2's, where the user is presented with three options on startup: Games (for homebrew/backup games), Multimedia (for MP3s, movies in .dpg format, eBooks etc.), and BootSlot-2 (generally ignored; this is for things such as rumble packs and GBA-emulators).

The R4 SDHC's menu with the three buttons (depending on skin, the button images will look different, but always in the same order)

The one important and defining difference between the R4 SDHC and the original R4v2 card is that the R4 SDHC card can accept up to 32GB Micro-SDHC cards as opposed to the R4v2's 2GB.

The R4 SDHC card was the first card ever to accept memory greater than 2GB. It could accept higher high capacity (HC) memory cards, hence the name R4 SDHC. It is now an established norm that cards accept high memory capacities, but the R4 SDHC was the card that started the trend. At the time, 8GB Micro-SDHC cards were just beginning to emerge on the market and the amount of users that flooded to the R4 SDHC to take advantage of this made it a real contender for the fastest selling DS card at the time, alongside the original R4v2 and the DSTT card. The only obvious downside to the R4 SDHC card was that because of the increased memory capacity, loading times on the card were approximately 6 to 8 seconds, much slower than the 2 to 3 seconds often seen on the R4v2 and the DSTT.

Recently, at the beginning of June in 2010, the R4 SDHC team released a brand new iteration of the card, dubbed the 2.10T version. The card initially confused some of the public because the packaging changed to a gold colour not unlike the infamous clone "R4i Gold" card. The wording on the card was also deliberately changed from "R4 Revolution" to "R4 Renovation". The reason for these changes was that the architecture of the card itself was completely re-done so the team wanted to distinguish the old black box from the new one as much as possible.

The R4 SDHC v2.10T is the card that NDS-Gear sells (the newest iteration) it has great game compatibility and is our preferred product for users of the regular Nintendo DS or DS Lite console.

Loading times on the card were slashed to an impressive 3-4 seconds and the card itself is made of a stronger, slightly lighter plastic with components rearranged to give the card even more mechanical stability. The interface was also changed to closely mimic the official R4i SDHC (the sister card of the R4 SDHC that is compatible on newer Nintendo DSi and DSi XL consoles). The functionality of the card itself has remained the same, but the software is now compatible with newer applications and games in addition to being faster.

In summary, the newest addition to the R4 SDHC family is a very welcome one indeed. With so many newer Nintendo DSi and DSi XL compatible cards coming out, support for many of the older, regular DS cards has declined or even ceased to exist. For example, the EZFlash IV, R4v2 and the DSTT all no longer have software updates being released for them. With these reasons in mind, the new R4 SDHC card is a great reminder that the R4 SDHC team want to capitalise on this and secure the DS / DS Lite market amongst consumers who have yet to buy (or are not considering) the Nintendo DSi.

Official R4 SDHC Feature List

• R4 SDHC is a 2nd generation storage device (no booting tool required)
• SDHC Card Support up to 32GB
• Flush fitting slot 1 card
• Uses MicroSD card, FAT16 or 32
• Supports any MicroSD card speed with no lag in game
• Supports Clean ROM, drag and drop. Works on any OS
• Built in NoPass
• Automatically detect save type
• Save directly to MicroSD card, not to onboard chip
• Supports Moonshell and other homebrew. Open I/O interface
• User friendly skinnable interface. Touchscreen or button operation
• Supports rumble pak and memory pak
• Supports the WiFi game, DS Rumble Pak, DS Browser
• Supports changes of the background of Operation Interface
• Support Skin DIY by setting background and font colors on Main Menu and Game Menu manually and automatically
• Supports 4-scale-lightness adjustment (DS Lite only)
• Supports the Soft Reset.
• Supports Action Replay cheat
• Moonshell 1.6 support Software Reset function (Press START key back to the R4 menu)
• DLDI auto-patching
• Full download play support