The R4 cards only support Nintendo DS and DSL gaming consoles. Whereas, R4 SDHC & R4i SDHC cards are compatible with Nintendo DS, DSL, and DSi consoles. If you are upgrading your Nintendo device from DS version to latest DSi then go for R4/R4i SDHC cards.
Traditional R4 cards do not have power saving features and often consumes more electricity. On the contrary, the SDHC cards features sleeping mode for extending standby time. We'll recommend you using the low R4i SDHC energy consumption products to save electricity for better environment.
The storage capacity of R4 cards is limited to only 2GB. They need high-end speedy cards to function properly and do not support SDHC. As the name suggest, R4 SDHC and R4i SDHC cards support SDHC up to 32GB. Both of them provide improved performance even with slow cards.
Team R4, manufacturer of R4 cards, stopped the production with R4v2 and released last update on April 24, 2008. Since then these cards do not have real-time updates for latest Nintendo firmware and games. Some fans of R4 launched unofficial updates to support few games, but these don't last long. On the contrary, R4i-SDHC team is completely dedicated to provide continuous kernel and maintenance updates to support all NDS games and upcoming firmware. There are also plans to provide updates or new card supporting Nintendo 3DS.
The R4 cards are not flexible as you are not free to apply settings for individual game. If you have applied one option on R4 cards then it is valid for all games. Whereas, you can set different options for each game using R4i and R4 SDHC cards. The SDHC cards support soft-reset setting and cheat-code on per-game basis to avoid conflicts.
The cheat-code mechanism of older 'Revolution for DS' cards is hard to use. That's why many users faced problems to properly use the cheat-code function using R4 cards. On the contrary, the R4/R4i SDHC cards have easy-to-use cheat code mechanism and better user interface to deliver smooth gaming experience to its users.
Most of the users face problems with R4 cards as they do not recognize and display SD card type, storage and format options. On the other hand, R4/R4i SDHC cards recognize and display SD type, format and storage capacity.
The inbuilt Moonshell 1.61 in R4 cards lacks latest decoding engine and provides unclear video with slow decoding. The R4/R4i SDHC cards have built-in Moonshell 2.0 to provide better multimedia experience with clearer video, better image quality, and higher decoding performance.
The manufacturing process of R4 cards is less accurate and as a result, they don't fit well in the SLOT-1. This causes Nintendo gaming consoles to freeze frequently. Whereas, the manufacturer of R4/R4i SDHC cards revamp the build process to avoid even a bit error in shape and size. In new process, the gold-finger area and card thickness are controlled specifically with an error range of less than 0.1mm.
If you care your expensive Nintendo gaming console then R4 SDHC/R4i SDHC cards are much better to use than traditional R4 cards.
