A few weeks before CES 2024 in Las Vegas, flash memory specialist Lexar is unveiling different storage formats in advance, including several suitable for photographers and other videographers. Its new flagship product is a CF Express 4.0 type B card – including the ultra-fast cards that Panasonic, Nikon, Fujifilm, Leica and Canon use in their most high-end cameras (often, in parallel with SD). ).
The CFexpress 4.0 type B Diamond series from Lexar is interfaced with PCIExpress 4.0, a standard which allows it to display staggering speeds: no less than 3600 MB (or 3.6 GB) in reading and 3.3 GB/s in writing . While sports, action or nature photographers will appreciate seeing a card capable of absorbing large bursts, the technical reality is that it is the buffer that generally limits burst depth. These cards are undoubtedly the main target for videographers, who will find here a model capable of absorbing without flinching the extremely high bitrates of 8K video – a format which, it should be remembered, records with an image definition of 33 megapixels, compared to 8 Mpx for 4K and only 2 Mpx for Full HD.
To satisfy Sony, the only player in the segment to have preferred type A CF Express cards – a player that weighs heavily in market share, particularly in video –, Lexar has released its card in a Gold version. A logical change in nomenclature compared to the Diamond type B: smaller, the cards have half as many channels available. Which logically divides the speeds by two, with 1.8 GB/s reading and 1.65 GB/s writing. Despite lower performance, this is more than enough for most of the speeds available on Sony cameras. Exactly what photographers will need to withstand the huge 120 fps bursts of the future Alpha A9 Mark III.
The three different physical formats of the CFExpress standard. © CompactFlash Association
Smaller and more modest, the new Micro SD called UHS-II Professional Gold displays more modest speeds: 280 MB/s reading and 180 MB/s writing. However, this will be more than enough for the best video definitions of the current GoPro 12 Black, Lexar’s target market for these cutting-edge cards.
And for all image professionals recording in the field – and on different card formats – Lexar is taking the opportunity to launch an external SSD hard drive called Armor 700. Reinforced to survive the horrors of field shoots, this backup solution nomad offers read/write speeds of 2 GB/s. Enough to save a 256 GB card in just two minutes.
At the time of writing, Lexar had not communicated details on the capacities, availability and prices of its future cards. More information will be available during and after CES, which will be held in early January 2024.