Sony announces world’s fastest SD cards

 

Sony has just unveiled their SF-G series of SD cards, which are supposed to be the world’s fastest SD cards to date. With read and write speeds of up to 300 and 299 MB/s respectively, these cards would be ideal for high-resolution video cameras, but these cards should work with any device that supports the UHS-II interface.

 
Image courtesy of Sony.

At nearly 300 MB/s, these speeds are very similar to the limits of SATA II, making these cards faster than a lot of older SSDs, at less than a third of their size. This just goes to show how far we’ve come in the last few years.

Of course, these SD cards still aren’t as fast as the newer CFast 2.0 and XQD-type cards, but that doesn’t make the SF-G series any less interesting. Especially with the rise in popularity of 4K content, and with more and more prosumer camera’s (e.g. the upcoming Panasonic GH5) supporting 4K video capture, these cards should turn out to be very useful.

Image courtesy of Sony.

Along with the cards, Sony has also announced a special PC card reader which will let you take advantage of the high speeds the cards have to offer. The MRW-S1 card reader is made specifically for the SF-G cards, although theoretically any UHS-II card should work with it. The MRW-S1 sports a built-in USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Type A) connector to assure the highest possible transfer speeds to and from your SD-card.

It’s unclear whether Sony will follow up these series with Micro-SD flankers, but if they do, it will likely take months at the very least to shrink these cards to Micro-SD size. Since these cards do seem to be the start of a completely new series, it’s hard to imagine that Sony will leave it at just these three cards, though.

No pricing has been confirmed by Sony as of yet, but the cards will be available starting March, with the card reader following in April. The cards will be available in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities.

  

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