I'm looking for a new card reader and I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and buy a decent (read: expensive) one, or if a cheap one will work fine. Is there any reason I should avoid buying a cheap USB card reader? I'm not shooting professionally (or prolifically) so I don't need to be able to upload tons of images super fast, but I don't want to sit and wait for 2 hours to upload 10 pictures either. I also don't want something that is gonna break on me after 2 uses. If any of you have experience with relatively cheap card readers let me know, THANKS!

yes ... you get what you pay for. I have 3-4 of them and one of them is cheap and not very reliable. One of the possibilities with a cheap one is messing up a transfer mid cycle, sometimes resulting in loss of pictures. Buy a decent one or if you are like me I typically just xfer straight from camera to computer as there is no possible damage that can be inflicted on removing said card, putting into a third party device and then reinserting in camera. Even if I shoot an event and use up 3-4 cards I still usually xfer them via camera than card readers. But whatever. You get what you pay for.

Yeah I was just uploading straight from my camera but my cable got lost while moving. Now that things have finally settled down I've tried to find some time to start shooting again and alas, no way to upload! I guess i'll see if best buy has a decent card reader, if not I'll just order a new cable and have to wait a little longer to upload...
Thanks for the quick reply!

I sometimes shoot tethered to my laptop on some types of shoots and so having the USB cord is pretty important to me. Mine are cheap, maybe $10-15 for the cord versus maybe $30-40 for the good reader that will read every card you may not ever have. I'm sure you can find a dumbed down version that only reads a couple of cards. In my opinion should you buy the reader, get one with less slots as that means less things have a chance of going wrong plus it will cost less. And I would just stick to researching name brand stuff like Sandisk, Lexar, Hoodman, Belkin instead of generic stuff that has not the history or warranty.