Lexar unveiled a suite of new memory cards and storage products at IFA 2024 in Germany, including CFexpress 4.0 cards, stainless steel SD cards, and an SD 8.0-equipped SDXC Express card boasting tremendous speeds. The Lexar Armor Gold SD UHS-II and Silver Pro SD UHS-II cards are constructed using 316 stainless steel, a world’s first. The durable, rugged cards include IP68 waterproofing, dustproofing, and, leveraging the steel case, bend resistance. The V60 cards promise similar performance, with the Gold and Silver editions promising read speeds up to 280 MB/s. The cards differ in terms of write speed, with the Silver Pro topping out at 160 MB/s and the Gold delivering up to 205 MB/s write speeds. The Lexar Armor Gold and Silver Pro SD cards will come in 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities, although pricing and availability information is not yet available. Lexar also showed off a new, high-speed SD card, the Lexar Professional Gold Pro SDXC Express Card. The card adheres to the SD 8.0 specification, announced way back in 2020, and promises theoretical speeds up to four gigabytes per second. Now, that’s different from what the new Lexar card promises — it promises read speeds up to 1,700 MB/s and write speeds up to 1,000 MB/s. However, these speeds are significantly faster than other SD cards. Lexar says the Gold Pro Express is over five times faster than SD 4.0 cards.
It is vital to put a giant asterisk here, though, because a card capable of those speeds doesn’t mean most use cases will be able to realize them. Although Lexar’s new card should work with any device compatible with SDXC cards, a camera or card reader must be able to take advantage of the SD 8.0 standard’s PCIe 4.0 technology to reach the promised performance. It’s akin to CFexpress 4.0 cards, which Lexar also announced. If a camera or device isn’t CFexpress 4.0 compatible, a card won’t reach its limit. It’ll work, but only at the level of the host device. Unsurprisingly, the Lexar Diamond CFexpress Type B card is VPG 400 certified. Speaking of CFexpress 4.0, Lexar’s new Type B Diamond, Gold, and Silver cards utilize next-gen PCIe 4.0 technology, as does the latest Type A Gold card. They’re all designed for 8K RAW video recording. The Lexar Professional Diamond CFexpress 4.0 Type B card is swift, promising read speeds up to 3,700 MB/s and write speeds up to 3,400 MB/s. Lexar hasn’t announced availability or pricing for any of its new memory cards, although it’s a safe bet the SD 8.0 card and CFexpress Diamond Type B cards won’t be cheap. Image credits: Lexar
