Sony 160GB TOUGH CFexpress Type A Flash Memory Card - VPG400 High Speed G Series with Video Performance Guarantee (Read 800MB/s and Write 700MB/s) – CEA-G160T

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For the most part, these cards were all pretty consistent in their performance during our benchmarking with the exception of Acer and Atlas Pro, both of which were a lot more frenetic in how much they jumped from high speeds to low speeds during testing, which gives us pause recommending either for video workflows. Photo Performance There’s no getting away from the fact that many photographers will find CFexpress cards prohibitively expensive. Why it made the cut: It offers fast read and write speeds at lower prices than the Sony alternative.

Unlike CFast 2.0, XQD is cross-compatible in many cases with its successor: CFexpress Type B. The Nikon D5, D500, D850, Z6, and Z7 all received firmware updates to support the use of CFexpress Type B cards in addition to XQD. Yes and no, as the manufacturer of the SoC (camera main chip - Canon, Sony or Socionext) can just replace the existing PCIe interface with a faster one (probably just buying in a design). The problem is speeding the chip up to have other things work fast enough, which will probably need a geometry shrink, which can get very expensive and may not be practical at the camera market size - probably less than 1M units for the high end ones that might have this, split over three manufacturers. Even more intensive video capture modes are the obvious use, but do we really need 4GB/s? The efficiency of the HEVC encoding format means you won’t need anything like that data rate even at 8K 120fps.In this test, higher is better. As expected, CFexpress 4.0 cards ran away with the best speeds, but the OWC Atlas series, especially the Ultra, performed the best. ProGrade Digital’s new card was the most consistent between read and write performance. Almost any SD card on the market will be labeled Class 10 — there are a few lingering Class 4 cards you can find brand new, but for the most part, they’re all Class 10. Just look for a small “10” inside of a “C” on the front. This number was used to communicate that the card was capable of at least 10 MB/s read and write speeds, and lower classes denoted lower MB/s speeds. The Sony Alpha A7S III (above) is the first camera to support CFexpress Type A, and this the most interesting format of the moment. Yes, it may offer the lowest performance of the lot, but these cards can fit into a combi slot that will also take SD cards. Big deal, you might be thinking. Why should I be excited about a memory card? Especially when you might have noticed that a CFexpress card seems to cost a bit more than a regular SD memory card.

Beyond speed, Sony designed its cards to be, as the name says, tough. They can withstand falls up to 15 feet and have been rigidity tested to 70 newtons of force. Sony says they are three times stronger than the CFexpress standard for bending. They can also withstand extreme temperatures, X-rays, electrostatic, and intense UV light. Even if you are an expedition photographer, these cards will hold up to some serious abuse. Of all the available cards, if capacity is your biggest concern, Angelbird is probably the best bet since it currently is the only brand to offer a whopping 4TB in a single card. It’s not taking top honors anywhere else, but its performance is good enough that photographers and filmmakers will unlikely notice when out in the field. The Best Value CFexpress Type B Card in 2023 First announced in 2010 by SanDisk, Sony, and Nikon, XQD is a flash memory card using the PCI Express interface. XQD Version 2.0, announced in 2012, moved to the PCI Express 3.0 interface. For most photographers, we just recommend V60 cards — they’re a great balance between speed and affordability. If you shoot 4K (or higher) video, you may want to invest in V90 cards, depending on your camera. Basic 8-bit footage will write easily to V60 (or often even to V30) cards, and most 10-bit 4K will be fine with V60 cards, but higher-quality footage like ProRes RAW or regular RAW may need at least V90.The SD Association, the organization that administers SD card standards, has come up with an alternative to CFexpress. It’s called SD Express, and uses the same PCIe 3.0 interface while offering similar max speeds of 4GB/s. As for the kinds of photographers who will adopt CFexpress in the next couple of years, pros and enthusiasts with money to spend are likely to increasingly choose CFexpress, while SD will still be there for those with a lower-end camera, or those who don’t need top-tier write performance. Who makes CFexpress cards and how much do they cost? The CFexpress Type A form factor is gaining broad industry adoption due to its size and performance, and its open industry standard support from major device manufacturers.

Of note, PetaPixel did notice that a few cards took longer to recover than others. Namely, the ProGrade Digital Gold, Acer, Pro Master Pro Velocity Cine, and Pergear Ultra were slightly slower to fully clear the buffer than the other cards, meaning that a photographer in the field won’t be ready to fire another full burst quite as soon as they would be if they used any other tested card. Many CFexpress cards top out at 512GB of storage, with a few offering 2TB. Angelbird brought something new to the table with its massive 4TB card. It offers more storage space than anything else available at the time of writing.Where this card does beat out all the competition is in burst performance. It can shoot at the Canon R5’s highest burst setting for just over 30 seconds before the buffer limit slows it down, which is nearly double any other card. So if you are photographing sports or fast-moving wildlife, this will be the card to use because of its burst capabilities. Aside from differing in size (type A CFexpress cards are physically smaller than type B), the main difference between the two types is the number of PCIe lanes available in each. Type A CFexpress cards offer one lane whereas type B offers two. This translates to different data transfer speeds; type A caps out at 1000MB/s, and type B has a maximum speed of 2,000MB/s (though it's unlikely you'll reach these top speeds in practice). Can a CFexpress reader read XQD cards? Panasonic rolled out updates for their XQD cameras in 2019. Nikon have updated firmware for mirrorless Z6/7 and DSLRs D5 / D500 / D850 / D4S / D4 which all have XQD slots. Avoid these at all costs. No cameras support the format and mutliple experts that have spoken to PetaPixel don’t believe any ever will. Repeat: no camera on the market in any category supports the SD Express format. Without such support, you get worse performance while paying significantly more than SD UHS-II cards. SD Express looks identical to SD cards, but don’t perform the same. Avoid them. | Photo by Jaron Schneider for PetaPixel Most of the big names in SD cards are already on-board with this newer format, with Sony, Delkin, SanDisk, Lexar, ProGrade and Integral all producing CFexpress Type B cards.