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Lexar has announced its newest Silver Series memory card offerings. The company’s Silver Series cards offer speeds that many photo and video professionals require without the higher price tags of the company’s Gold Series offerings.
The first of the new cards is the Lexar Professional CFexpress Type B Silver in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities. The other is the Lexar Professional Silver Pro SDXC UHS-II SD card, available in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities.
Sony offshoot, Nextorage, has announced its newest UHS-II SD cards. The announcement brings two new series of memory cards. There’s the UHS-II SE (NX-F2SE), which is a V60 cards offering read speeds up to 280MB/sec, and there’s the UHS-II Pro (NX-F2PRO) V90 card, with read speeds of up to 300MB/sec and write speeds up to 299MB/sec. There are three cards in each series, with the UHS-II SE V60 cards coming in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities and the faster UHS-II Pro V90 cards in 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities.
Nextorage says that both the NX-F2SE and NX-F2PRO series cards are built tough with an IP57 rating, drop resistance from up to 1.5 metres, tested for 10,000 insertion and removal procedures, and come with a 5-year warranty. The company says they’ve passed 9 different types of durability tests to deliver maximum peace of mind.
In November, ProGrade Digital announced the largest SD cards to date in their Gold V60 UHS-II lineup. With the data storage needs of video shooters today, such large cards are in high demand – especially at reasonable prices. So, we took the new $199 ProGrade Gold 512GB V60 UHS-II card and put it through speed tests to compare it with ProGrade’s $499 Cobalt 512GB V90 UHS-II SD card.
While there is a little difference in the maximum hypothetical read speed of the card (250MB/sec vs 300MB/sec), they offer minimum sustained write speeds of 60MB/sec and 90MB/sec, respectively. For many of us, this may not matter. 60MB/sec equates to 480Mbps – more than plenty for most cameras on the market – but is it worth getting the V90 card (720Mbps) if you don’t really need it? Let’s find out.
In January, OWC announced their new Atlas S Pro V90 UHS-II SD Cards, available in 32GB, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB capacities. They’re priced very competitively, too – that is to say, they’re less expensive than many of their V90 competitors but still a little more expensive than V60 UHS-II cards.
As V90 cards, they guarantee sustained write speeds of at least 90MB/sec. According to OWC, real-world testing has provided write speeds of up to 276MB/sec and read speeds of up to 290MB/sec. Such claims are easy enough to verify – at least, one would think so – so when OWC offered to send us some to try out, we decided to put these speeds to the test ourselves.
Manufacturers of memory cards, amongst other things, Wise and Sabrent have both announced their new 512GB V90 UHS-II SD cards, with write speeds guaranteed at a minimum of 90MB/sec. The Wise card was technically announced first, a couple of days before the Sabrent, although neither card is actually available just yet. There’s also quite a price discrepancy between the two.
The Wise 512GB V90 SD card is to be priced at $800, while the Sabrent is going to be $600. Not only is the Sabrent significantly cheaper than its only competition right now, they also believe they can get theirs to market and on sale first, with pre-orders already open and a release date of April 24th, 2022. Wise, however, is also expected to release in “mid-April”. So, the race is on.
There aren’t many companies out there making UHS-II microSD cards, as there are virtually no cameras out there that can fully support them yet (still). One of the companies that does make them, though, is ProGrade Digital. They launched their initial V60 UHS-II microSD cards back in September 2018 with read and write speeds of up to 200MB/sec and 80MB/sec respectively.
Now, ProGrade has launched new V60 UHS-II microSD cards with increased read and write speeds of 250MB/sec and 130MB/sec respectively. As well as speeding up the cards, a new higher capacity 256GB version will be available. Oh, and they’ve cut the prices virtually in half.
ProGrade Digital is rounding out their card reader lineup quite nicely to appeal to as many different types of user as possible. They’re now up to four card readers, covering CFast+UHS-II SD, CompactFlash+UHS-II SD, dual UHS-II microSD cards and now dual UHS-II SD cards. The new card reader is priced at $79.99, same as the other three, and is available now.
ProGrade Digital certainly seems to have settled into the swing of things nicely since their launch earlier in the year. Initially starting up with a range of CFast 2.0 UHS-II V60 SD cards, and a dual format card reader, they quickly expanded out into UHS-II V90 SD and the next major high-end format; CFexpress.
Now, they’re going small, announcing three new V60 UHS-II microSD cards. With users demanding higher quality footage from their drones, action cameras & 360 cameras, it’s a logical path to pursue. They’ve also announced two new USB 3.1 Gen 2 card readers, too. One contains SD and CompactFlash slots while the other takes a pair of microSD cards.
When Micron announced they were quitting the Lexar brand last year, it came as quite a shock. Many long-time Lexar fans were worried about where their future memory cards would be coming from. A short time later, the Lexar brand was acquired by Longsys, a Chinese manufacturer of flash storage. Very little seems to have happened in Lexar’s story since then, though, except for the continued production of Lexar XQD cards.
Now, though, it seems a new company, sort of, is entering the fray. ProGrade Digital is a new brand of professional grade memory cards and card readers aimed at photographers. But while this is a new company, they aren’t newcomers to the memory card game. It’s being headed up by a team of former Lexar and SanDisk executives and senior management.
Udi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.
Alex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe
Dave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.
John Aldred is a photographer with over 20 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.
Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.
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