CFexpress memory cards

CFexpress is now the memory card format of choice for professional cameras, as the best CFexpress cards are significantly faster than even the zippiest UHS-II SD cards. Evolving from the XQD card format, CFexpress Type B cards share the same outer design as XQD cards, but pack faster memory inside, making them some of the fastest memory cards currently available on the market. Almost all cameras that originally supported XQD cards have now been firmware-updated to also work with CFexpress Type B cards, so cameras such as the Nikon Z 6 and Z 7 are, thankfully, no longer restricted to XQD cards alone.

Holding all the cards

The Type B CFexpress format is based around the same super-fast PCI express Gen3 interface and NVMe 1.3 technology as the best portable SSDs out there. However, they do tend to differ in the amount of PCIe data transfer lanes available, with Type B cards having two lanes allowing for 2000MB/s max speeds, which makes them perfect for transferring 14-bit uncompressed Raw files and massive 8K video footage.

To help us get an idea of the kind of sustained read and write speeds of these cards we used Blackmagic Design’s Disk Speed Test to put each of the contenders through their paces by transferring 100 JPEGs and 100 Raw images (a combined size of 10.33GB). We used the Lexar Professional CFexpress USB 3.2