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Silver series: Lexar brings CFexpress cards of the slower type

Jul 22, 2021

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While the SD-Express cards are still a long time coming, Lexar has introduced new CFexpress memory cards. The models of the Silver series work with up to 1,000 MB/s and are therefore not nearly as fast as the older models of the manufacturer.

CFexpress type B of the slower type

The Lexar Professional CFexpress Type B series, which was introduced last year, achieves up to 1,750 MB/s reading and 1,000 MB/s writing. The new Lexar Professional CFexpress Type B card of the Silver series, on the other hand, is specified with a maximum of 1,000 MB/s for reading and up to 600 MB/s for writing. The “super-fast performance” according to the press release must therefore be put into perspective. Furthermore, the Silver series is limited to two models with 128 GB and 256 GB of storage space. The faster models are available with 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB.

Internally, the memory cards measuring 29.60 × 38.50 × 3.80 mm (W × L × H) work with PCIe 3.0 x2. According to Lexar, they are only “compatible with firmware-enabled CFexpress cameras”. The standard uses the same interface as XQD memory cards, but an adapted firmware is required. Examples of digital cameras with CFexpress support are Canon EOS R5, Nikon D6 or Sony A1.

prices and availability

Lexar indicates immediate availability at recommended retail prices of 194.99 euros (128 GB) and 389.99 euros (256 GB). In view of the costs for much faster variants, the prices seem high, even if they should be significantly lower if they are widely available in free trade

CFexpress is also available smaller or larger

With the introduction of the CFexpress 2.0 specification, the smaller ones became Format type A with PCIe 3.0 x1 and the larger format type C with PCIe 3.0 x4 introduced. So far, however, type B has mainly been represented on the market. The smaller Type A models are currently only offered by Sony. At least in this country, the large type C variants are not yet available.

CFexpress form factors Type A Type B Type C Dimensions 20 mm × 28 mm × 2.8 mm 38.5 mm × 29.8 mm × 3.8 mm 54 mm × 74 mm × 4.8 mm Interface PCIe Gen 3 x1 PCIe Gen 3 x2 PCIe Gen 3 x4 protocol NVMe 1.3 throughput (gross) 985 MB/s 1,969 MB/s 3,938 MB/s

A CFexpress card reader compatible with type B with Lexar only introduced USB 3.2 Gen 2 × 2 for up to 1,700 MB/s a few weeks ago.

SD Express is just getting started

With SD Express and microSD Express there are further standards for memory cards with PCIe and NVMe. But the market is not there yet. Lexar recently announced the development of the first SD-Express cards, but these will not be available until next year, initially in the smallest version with around 800 MB/s. SD Express should, however, achieve the performance of the corresponding CFexpress counterparts in faster versions.