SanDisk has finally released their 1TB Extreme Pro SD Cards
Sep 24, 2019
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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It’s been three long years since SanDisk first showed off a 1TB SD card at Photokina. It was operational, but it was essentially just a proof of concept to show that it could be done. Now, SanDisk feels the market is ready to adopt such huge cards, and that the prices today will be more manageable than they were in 2016.
We caught up with SanDisk at IBC 2019 where they were also showing off the 1TB microSD Cards, their new CFexpress cards, as well as a new fast USB SSD.
SanDisk has been very quiet about their 1TB SD cards over the last three years, revealing absolutely nothing about them whatsoever in that time. Now, though, we find out why they weren’t released three years ago. Primarily, the reason was cost. They would have been ridiculously expensive by then and virtually nobody would have bought them. So, there wasn’t really much point in making them beyond the proof of concept.
Now, though, the technology has gotten faster, cheaper, and photographers and filmmakers are used to larger cards. The card being released is a 170MB/sec SanDisk Extreme Pro. They’re UHS-I, not UHS-II, and that 170MB/sec is the read speed. The write speeds only go up to 90MB/sec, with only a guaranteed minimum of 30MB/sec sustained, thanks to that V30 rating.
So, if you were hoping to use this in something like the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K for shooting some sexy raw or ProRes footage, you’re going to be a little disappointed. For photographers, though, or shooting 1080p or 4K h.264 and h.265 footage, v30 is often enough to cope.
Also on display was the recently released 1TB Extreme microSD card, too. While cards of such capacity are more likely destined for 360° and VR cameras, the A2 performance rating means it should also work beautifully in your smartphone, too, either for shooting stills or video or as regular app and data storage. It offers read speeds of up to 160MB/sec and write speeds of up to 90MB/sec.
SanDisk revealed that their CFast 2.0 would remain in production, at least for the time being, but that they are also now focusing on their new CFexpress cards, and specifically mention the new Canon camera as a target camera for such cards – at least until Nikon, Panasonic, Phase One, etc. update their firmware.
Memory cards weren’t the only thing SanDisk was showing off at IBC, though. They also had a new portable and rugged SanDisk Extreme Pro SSD with them, too, capable of transfer speeds up to 1,050MB/sec. Prices for these have not yet been announced, but they will be available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities.
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We are giving away over $5,000 of cinema gear: https://bit.ly/2LQE6gw
DIYP’s coverage of IBC2019 is sponsored by Syrp, Manfrotto, Zhiyun, and Spiffy Gear.
John Aldred
John Aldred is a photographer with over 25 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter – and occasional beta tester – of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.
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31 responses to “SanDisk has finally released their 1TB Extreme Pro SD Cards”
1TB is a huge memory, It may use to shoot in raw.
My sandisk is only 64mb, but i am comfordable with it since I never use up the memory.
64MB? That’s not even one photo on some cameras. ;)
Hihi, I shoot in jpeg
Yuh but they costs a forutune. Do you really want to lose 1TB of images in a single go? That’s like losing 16 SD cards of 64GB each all at once. Too many eggs in one basket.
Funny, they used to say the same thing about 64GB cards “That’s like losing 16 SD cards of 4GB each all at once! Too many eggs in one basket”.
So, get a pair, shoot backups as you go, have two baskets. :)
I’ve never lost a card that’s worth £400+ I think I’d bloody well look after it..
I think he means “losing” in a more general sense, rather than literal. Like, the card gets corrupted and you lose its contents, rather than the card itself. :)
Speaking of, I’m noticing the regular 64GB cards with UHS-I 95mb/s are on clearance while they’re pushing the newer UHS-II cards at a higher price point.
Think I’ll go down and snap up a few for spares while I can. ?
I did the same, only with 128GB cards. I like bigger baskets. ;)
…. and Sd card are fragile compared to XQD
Yes but soooooooooooo much cheaper..
In NZ that’ll cost a $100 a Gig to purchase
$1200 CAD + HST (harmonized Sales Tax) in Canada … and this is just an estimate for ONE card.
W Douglas LeBlanc yes I think I’ll stick too a small card I’m sure the Chinese will produce a cheaper and as good version soon
man that’s a lot of eggs in one basket!
not interested
6Tb of photos – but only 6 of them will ever be good ;-)
How good are SD cards at long term storage? Would these be an option for my off site backups?
Peter Foote They would be quite good for that, but honestly USB’s would be cheaper and just as secure.
Jyi Offer I like the small form factor.
It’s very unnecessary
For you maybe
Jyi Offer if it is the only card you are using its unnecessary and a bad idea.
If you use the one card for a big shoot yeah you have the convenience of it being on one card. But what happens if you are reaching the end of your shoot and your card has an error, there is a whole day wasted opposed to using multiple cards, that way atleast then if you fill one card and move to another if the second card has an issue atleast then you have some images.
Or two 1TB cards, one in each slot :p LOL and another set in the kit bag for backup in case you encounter a fouled card.
W Douglas LeBlanc that is a fair point but at the cost of these, could you justify it haha
Fantastic!!!
That’s a lot of space to record video that would otherwise require an external recorder.
That chip has as much memory as my iMac.
Tim need because I never clear my cards and don’t intend to start now
… Until you’ve experienced that one single card corruption … then you’ll want to diversify your cards into several smaller ones.
If you don’t clear a card when you get home, you’ll be able to grab a couple of others and head right out again.
How much
I bought my 1tb micro SD extreme pro at a prize of £523. At some point, I saw it at £420 but only for few days.