Looking to lure professionals and content creators shooting 6K, 8K, and beyond, Lexar has announced what they call the fastest CFExpress cards in the media card space. The Lexar Type B Diamond Series promises read speeds of up to 1900mb/s and write speeds of 1700 mb/s. Meanwhile, the Gold Series Type A handles read/write speeds of 900 mb/s and 800 mb/s respectively.
The Diamond Type B is designed for professional applications, and if the specs bear out, will be 150 mb/s faster than the current fastest CFExpress offering, while the Gold Type A is listed as being capable of outperforming ProGrade’s fastest offering, making it more than enough for shooting in 4K for most content creators.
Image Credit – Lexar
Lexar boasts that both cards should give content creators the ability to “smoothly capture RAW 8K, 6K, and 4K video with ease.” With the kind of speed, it’s easy to see why.
Lexar’s speed specs have even garnered the CFExpress cards the new VPG 400 certification by the Compact Flash Association (CFA), indicating higher-speed media cards that can achieve sustained read/write speeds of at least 400 MB/S.
The term “sustained” is important here, as the spec for the Lexar cards indicates “peak read/write” times, and Lexar also states that “your mileage may vary,” depending on the host device (cameras).
For the Diamond line, for instance, while 1900/1700 mb/s is impressive on its face, it is by no means an indicator of what the media card is capable of all the time. But the CFA certification means that the card is still capable of handling consistent file transfer and write times required by high bit rate media applications.
Image Credit – Lexar
Like all CFE cards, both the Diamond and Gold series cards promise to be backward compatible with XQD cards, with a camera firmware update.
Lexar has also designed the Diamond and Gold series cards to be robust with a shockproof and temperature-resistant construction that guards against extreme temperature ranges from 14 degrees to 158-degrees F. The cards are also backed with a lifetime warranty.
Lexar also states that it plans on releasing a high-speed CFExpress card reader in the coming months that can handle ultra-high-speed USB 10Gbps transfer protocol via USB Type-C®. Though it looks to be of a Type A variety.
No word on pricing just yet, or what sizes are available, but the photo examples hint at 160GB and 256GB sizes. The expected delivery is the second quarter, so, the summer of 2022.
[source: Lexar]
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