The brand new CFexpress 4.0 specification guarantees considerably quicker switch speeds than the playing cards at the moment in the marketplace and whereas no digicam can make the most of it proper now, your pc can, which makes a powerful case for consolidating your storage {hardware} right into a single media.
Introduced on the finish of August, CFexpress 4.0 remains to be a little bit of a methods out for many reminiscence card producers. Not ProGrade Digital, nonetheless, who introduced a brand new 1.3TB card and card reader just some days later.
PetaPixel obtained its palms on this very new {hardware} and the preliminary exams are proving extraordinarily spectacular. The brand new reminiscence card was capable of principally triple the examined learn speeds of our best-performing last-generation CFexpress playing cards and it was almost 4 occasions quicker relating to write speeds:
In truth, these speeds are so good that they’d blow any non-Thunderbolt SSD out of the water and are the closest we’ve ever seen USB come to the efficiency of the OWC Envoy Professional FX and Lacie Rugged SSD that we examined in our greatest SSD information.
This excessive efficiency is such that it permits photographers and filmmakers a brand new possibility: ditch moveable, standalone SSDs and simply use CFexpress and a reader. PetaPixel‘s Jordan Drake already does this with less-intensive video information, you need to use them with the brand new iPhone 15 Professional (it treats the playing cards identical to an SSD), and the speeds proven right here illustrate that CFexpress 4.0 is quick sufficient to function as a devoted drive for even 8K workflows. With earlier CFexpress, there simply was not sufficient bandwidth for 8K ProRes 422 HQ information. Now? No downside.
However the excellent news doesn’t cease there: editors received’t even want to purchase a brand new CFexpress 4.0 card to make the most of this selection.
The actual benefit for CFexpress 4.0 and related readers is the bandwidth of the USB 4.0 interface they’re supported by. ProGrade’s new $100 reader is about to work with its new playing cards, however the fantastic thing about CFexpress is that it’s backward appropriate, which means older CFexpress 2.0 playing cards can get a efficiency increase in the event that they’re plugged into a brand new reader.
For instance, under are the testing numbers from a brand new Silver version Lexar 512GB CFexpress card — the identical mannequin it introduced in August — as processed via Lexar’s latest-generation USB 3.2 card reader:
These are very, excellent numbers by previous metrics. So good, it might be poised to unseat the Sony TOUGH CFexpress Kind B card that has been PetaPixel‘s suggestion for the final yr.
However this card isn’t even exhibiting us its greatest as a result of that USB 3.2 reader doesn’t have the bandwidth to permit the cardboard to essentially act on its true potential. Inserting the Lexar card in ProGrade’s new reader reveals us what it’s really able to:
That’s not a small enhance: that represents about 300 MB/s quicker write speeds and about 700 MB/s quicker learn speeds simply by utilizing a next-generation reader. Clearly, because of this PetaPixel must replace its whole CFexpress reminiscence card take a look at and put collectively new numbers based mostly on what is feasible due to USB 4.0, so sit up for that within the close to future.
The primary takeaway right here is that USB 4.0 CFexpress card readers are able to letting present playing cards attain new heights. If photographers and filmmakers have CFexpress playing cards already, getting a $100 reader will present them entry to speeds that outpace all different USB 3.2 moveable SSDs (USB 3.2 2×2 was not examined as a result of it’s so uncommon). Simply guarantee that the host pc is outfitted to assist USB 4.0. Whereas not each pc has it, it’s way more frequent than USB 3.2 2×2: Apple has been transport it in its gadgets for a while now.
Doing it will enable photographers and filmmakers to cut back the general funding in reminiscence and permit playing cards to carry out double responsibility — report within the subject and function a working drive within the workplace. That’s what PetaPixel can solely describe as a win.
