ProGrade Digital Releases 1TB Capacity CFexpress Card

ProGrade Digital announces two series of CFexpress type b memory cards for professional still and movie cameras. The Gold series goes up to a capacity of 1TB. The faster Cobalt series goes up to 650GB. The 1TB card costs $900.

The cards in the Cobalt series have a maximum read speed of 1700MB/s and a burst write speed of up to 1500MB/s. These memory cards, available with capacities of 325GB and 650GB, are also capable of long-term writing at a speed of 1400MB/s. Speeds like these come in handy when recording raw video files, or when recording 4k video at high frame rates.

More capacities will be available in the Gold series, from 128GB to 1TB. The maximum read and burst write speed is the same, but the write speed that is sustained for a long time is lower and depends on the capacity. With the 1TB card, that’s 500MB/s. ProGrade Digital sells the memory cards in American web stores and through its own site. The 128GB version costs $180 and the 1TB version costs $900.

In a datasheet, the manufacturer mentions the speeds that the individual cards can sustain for a long time. A maximum read speed of 1600MB/s is stated for all memory cards, slightly slower than what the manufacturer mentions in the specifications. With the Gold cards, the manufacturer guarantees a write speed of at least 500MB/s with the 512GB and 1TB cards. With the Cobalt cards, this is at least 1300MB/s.

ProGrade Digital’s CFexpress cards are based on the CFexpress 2.0 type b standard. The cards work with the NVME 1.3 protocol and have two PCI-E 3.0 lanes. The theoretical maximum speed of the standard is 2000MB/s. The Nikon D6 DSLR and Canon’s upcoming EOS R5 camera, among others, will use CFexpress memory cards.