CFexpress has lastly come into its personal and a number of firms at the moment are producing all kinds of capacities at a variety of costs. However with so many selections, which one do you have to purchase?
Up to date 2/15/2023: We’ve got made important updates to this information, together with the addition of a number of new reminiscence playing cards. Blackmagic up to date its disk pace reader, so all of the playing cards have been re-run with a purpose to preserve consistency and accuracy. Moreover, we modified our course of for burst picture seize by growing the information load on the playing cards. We even have eliminated the target video portion of our check — however retained our subjective expertise notes — whereas we decide a greater manner to offer that information to you.
CFexpress Kind B is, proper now, the most typical “subsequent technology” reminiscence card format and has all however completely gained out over the SD Affiliation’s flawed SD Categorical format regardless of its lofty guarantees. Whereas CFexpress Kind A can also be coming into its personal, solely Sony is utilizing the format in its mirrorless cameras and on the time of publication, solely three firms are producing that card format.
When extra can be found, this information will develop to incorporate CFexpress Kind A as effectively however, for now, the 2 choices from ProGrade Digital and Sony carry out mainly identically. PetaPixel has not acquired Delkin’s choice to check.
Each different digicam firm moreover Sony that has up to date to the newest and best reminiscence card format is utilizing Kind B, and as such there are much more choices within the market.
However all that efficiency comes at a literal price: CFexpress Kind B playing cards can get fairly costly. To avoid wasting you the wallet-ache of constructing a nasty choice, we’ve created a rigorous multi-stage check to place CFexpress playing cards via the wringer and make it easier to make the very best shopping for selections.
Beneath is an inventory of all of the CFexpress Kind B playing cards included in our testing:
PetaPixel will replace these outcomes periodically as we get hold of extra playing cards, so ensure that to bookmark this story and test again once you’re able to make a purchase order.
The Checks
To judge which playing cards carried out finest, we subjected every to a collection of exams. Within the case the place a card producer additionally provides a card reader, we used paired these merchandise collectively. If an organization didn’t present PetaPixel with a reader, exams have been carried out on the ProGrade Digital CFexpress Kind B and SD UHS-II twin card reader.
First, we examined the playing cards with Blackmagic Pace Take a look at to get numbers for the common peak learn and write speeds that may be anticipated when loading and unloading information to a pc. We then stuffed the playing cards at greater than three-quarters of every of their capacities and examined the pace once more to ensure that including information to the playing cards doesn’t have an effect on efficiency. These exams present us with a baseline degree of efficiency to anticipate.
The second check goes past peak speeds and appears at sustained speeds, that are quite a bit more durable for reminiscence card producers to hit persistently excessive numbers. These exams are carried out with HD Tune, one of some industry-standard benchmarks for measuring reminiscence efficiency, and are proven as a median of learn and write pace efficiency, known as switch pace.
The third and ultimate check is essentially the most related for photographers. We examined what number of seconds we may hearth a Canon R5 at most framerate and determination earlier than we hit the boundaries of the buffer. This implies we requested the digicam to report each RAW and the best high quality JPEG and accomplish that firing on the most 20 frames per second with the digital shutter. This check was carried out thrice and the outcomes have been averaged.
The Outcomes
Disk Pace Checks
On this check, increased is best. High performers right here go to SanDisk, Exascend, and Lexar. Whereas the Pergear Extremely stored up on the learn pace entrance, it wasn’t very spectacular when it got here to write down pace. Acer, OWC’s Atlas Professional, Angelbird, and Prograde’s Gold collection playing cards carried out the worst right here, however with speeds which are on no account “dangerous.”
Sustained Disk Pace Checks
On this check, increased is best and several other manufacturers stood out: SanDisk Excessive Professional, ProGrade Digital Cobalt, Sony TOUGH, Lexar, Exascend Nitro, Pergear Extremely, Nexstorage B1 Professional, and Delkin Black Collection. ProGrade’s Cobalt card examined the best sustained pace, with Sony’s TOUGH card shut behind. Acer scored the worst right here because the divide between its finest and worst switch speeds through the benchmark was very extensive.
Burst Photograph Take a look at
On this check, increased is best. This was maybe essentially the most telling check, because it tell us not solely how effectively a card was in a position to take information as quick as a digicam’s buffer may fill, nevertheless it additionally informed us how effectively the playing cards have been in a position to bounce again as soon as that buffer restrict was reached. As a observe, when writing to most sized JPEG and RAW, the buffer of the R5 is 45 frames. Given the 20 body per second most of the R5, the worst playing cards have been in a position to write about 100 pictures whereas the very best have been in a position to write greater than 240 — fairly the hole.
The highest performing playing cards on this check have been the OWC Atlas Professional Extremely, Sony TOUGH, Exascend Nitro, Nexstorage B1 Professional, and Lexar Diamond. A number of others just like the Delkin Black Collection and Angelbird AV Professional have been shut behind, whereas past that the dropoff was fairly steep. Of observe, each ProGrade Digital playing cards we examined carried out notably poorly right here not solely with their most recording time, but additionally of their bounce-back time. After hitting the buffer restrict, it took each playing cards an extra of 15 seconds for the digicam’s buffer to totally recuperate, whereas the higher-performing playing cards we examined bounced again in beneath 5 seconds — typically as shortly as two or three seconds.
Insights, Takeaways, and Suggestions
This could be a great time to say why the speeds we noticed in testing are nowhere close to the speeds any of the businesses placed on the packaging. Nearly each CFexpress card guarantees learn speeds at or above 1,700 MB/s, however the very best we noticed didn’t even get to 900 MB/s peak speeds and sustained speeds have been a lot decrease.
It’s because these peak speeds have been most probably obtained in laboratory environments with the SSD bus plugged instantly into a number PC. Whereas this can give absolutely the most efficiency the silicon is ready to produce, it’s additionally not something near a real-world scenario. Our exams goal to provide you a greater thought of what to really anticipate.
Video Efficiency
Be aware: Whereas this part’s info is not introduced within the charts above, it’s nonetheless related and thus we’ve got stored it right here for reference, as the knowledge continues to be correct.
Let’s get to the excellent news: each card we examined labored to our satisfaction with regards to recording high-resolution video information. Each card, whatever the speeds promised, was in a position to ingest 8K RAW video footage till the digicam overheated, which implies it’s extremely unlikely that anybody would run into any points with the playing cards when capturing within the area — the digicam will fail earlier than the cardboard does.
Even when a card doesn’t even come near the promised peak learn or write speeds seen on the facet of the field (which none of them did, by the way in which), it doesn’t matter. For video, Acer, which promised the least with regards to learn and write speeds, carried out identically to Angelbird which promised essentially the most.
A majority of the playing cards we examined have been in a position to maintain greater than 400 MB/s switch speeds, with solely ProGrade Digital’s Gold collection and Acer falling beneath that threshold. The one card we examined that has the Compact Flash Affiliation’s VPG400 certification — which requires 400 MB/s sustained speeds — was Exascend’s Nitro playing cards, though regardless of this they aren’t those holding the best sustained switch speeds: that goes to Prograde’s Cobalt line and Sony’s TOUGH playing cards. So whereas AngelBird guarantees some severely excessive sustained speeds on its web site and in advertising and marketing supplies, we weren’t in a position to replicate them utilizing industry-standard software program.
That stated, there could also be a cause for that. Angelbird is extraordinarily nitpicky about which playing cards are designed for which cameras which may imply that it does have some sort of particular tuning to work with cameras higher than with pc software program. This looks as if a stretch, however we’ve got no option to inform.
For essentially the most half, these playing cards have been all fairly constant of their efficiency throughout our benchmarking apart from Acer and Atlas Professional, each of which have been much more frenetic in how a lot they jumped from excessive speeds to low speeds throughout testing, which supplies us pause recommending both for video workflows.
Photograph Efficiency
Some manufacturers separated themselves from the pack within the images part, nonetheless, and there are clear winners and losers with regards to lengthy durations of burst picture efficiency.
Sony, OWC, Lexar, and Exascend all carried out inside a margin of error, whereas Nextstorage and Delkin have been proper on their tails. All six of those playing cards have been in a position to hearth at the least 200 frames with out dropping beneath the utmost 20 frames per second that the Canon R5 shoots and have been very fast to bounce again. It’s extremely unlikely {that a} photographer can be holding down the shutter for that lond uninterrupted, however even when they did, these playing cards would be capable to assist shortly firing at that tempo once more after solely a brief few second break.
On the underside finish, nonetheless, not solely have been playing cards like each of ProGrade’s choices, Acer, and the lower-end OWC Atlas not in a position to report for almost as many consecutive frames, some weren’t in a position to recuperate quick sufficient to make them even price utilizing in high-stress conditions like sports activities or occasions.
If you’re strictly a photographer who wants the final word burst picture efficiency and may’t threat lacking a shot, depend on Sony TOUGH, OWC Atlas Professional Extremely, Lexar Diamond, or Exascend Nitro firstly, however don’t be afraid to select up a Delkin Units Black Collection or the Nexstorage Professional B1 Professional both. If any of those are on sale, don’t hesitate to select them up.
The Finest Choices
Total, of the playing cards that we examined, we advocate going with Sony’s TOUGH, Lexar’s Diamond Collection, Exascend’s Nitro, SanDisk’s Excessive Professional (which carried out so equally to the SanDisk Professional Cine that we aren’t positive there actually is even a distinction), the Nexstorage B1 Professional, or Delkin’s Black Collection.
These playing cards posted wonderful efficiency in each video and picture testing in addition to our computer-based benchmarking. You’ll be secure to select up any of those, so store for what’s on sale — except you care about final burst picture efficiency, wherein case we advocate Sony above all others.
I’ll say that whereas the Exascend Nitro reminiscence card carried out very effectively, the corporate’s 20Gbps card reader is tremendous loud. Whereas it doesn’t appear to have any bearing on efficiency, the reader itself has lively cooling that creates a whopping 65 decibels of noise. If any card is plugged into the reader, it screeches at a excessive pitch that’s extremely annoying. No different reader we examined does this, and it didn’t carry out any higher than our ProGrade Digital normal testing reader in trade for all that racket.
After we introduced this up, Exascend informed us that the cardboard reader is purpose-designed to ship switch speeds of as much as 20 Gb/s, making its built-in fan a necessity for efficient cooling. Nevertheless, to appreciate that pace, it requires that the person’s pc system additionally helps USB 3.2 Gen 2 x2 transfers. That’s not frequent proper now, however the firm says the design future-proofs the reader.
Of all of the obtainable playing cards, if capability is your largest concern, Angelbird might be the very best guess because it presently is the one model to supply a whopping 4TB in a single card. However in the event you drive our hand and make us declare one general winner…
The Finest CFexpress Kind B Card in 2023
If you’re trying to purchase the very best card with essentially the most dependable efficiency, then we advocate the Sony TOUGH card. Whereas it doesn’t publish the best marks in all classes, it introduced essentially the most constant learn and write peaks and a number of the finest sustained efficiency amongst all of the playing cards.
PetaPixel’s Alternative: Sony TOUGH CFexpress Kind B reminiscence card.
