INTRODUCTION

   Even though i was always fascinated by photography (at least ever since i got a Polaroid camera in the early 90's) i never really found the time to take things a step further from being yet another amateur photographer. Still, I've had many Nikon, Canon, Olympus and Panasonic cameras over the years and the one thing they all had in common was finding the proper memory card to use. This may sound harder than what it was but that's actually not the case, not when i was always getting the latest consumer and semi-professional models with the highest resolutions (Megapixels) which in turn meant they needed the latest and fastest memory cards to hit the market. Currently I’m using two Nikon D3500 and a Canon EOS 800D cameras all of which i equip with the fastest SD and microSD cards that make their way to the lab. Still professional photographers have in large part moved away from SD and microSD cards to the latest and fastest CompactFlash format called CFexpress so i decided to start testing such memory cards as well starting with the Professional Gold 256GB Type B model by Lexar.

   For more than 25 years, Lexar has been a trusted leading global brand of memory solutions. Our award-winning lineup includes memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, solid-state drives and DRAM. With so many options, it’s easy to find the right Lexar solution to fit your needs. All Lexar product designs undergo extensive testing in the Lexar Quality Labs with more than 1,100 digital devices, to ensure performance, quality, compatibility, and reliability. Lexar products are available worldwide at major retail and e-tail stores. For more information or support, visit www.lexar.com.

   The Professional Gold is a CFexpress Type B line of cards (currently available in 64/128/256/512GB capacities) which basically means that they are based on the PCIe 3.0 NVMe v1.3 standard with 2 lanes (Gen3x2). Worth noting is that there are also CFexpress Type A cards that feature a single lane (Gen3x1) and also the upcoming Type C cards that feature 4 lanes (Gen3x4) meaning these are slower and faster respectively compared to Type B cards like the Professional Gold series by Lexar. So yes, CFexpress cards are basically the same as PCIe 3.0 (Gen3) NVMe SSDs and are thus capable of reaching read speeds of up to 4000MB/s (for the upcoming Type C models). For now, however CFexpress Type B holds the speed crown and with performance numbers of up to 1750MB/s for reads and 1000MB/s for writes these cards are over 3 times faster than the fastest micro SD and SD cards out there today (over 5 times in reads and 3 times in writes to be precise). Of course, to fully take advantage of CFexpress Type B cards and their impressive performance you also need a compatible USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 card reader and since Lexar also has one available, I’ll be using it to test and see just how their 256GB Professional Gold CFexpress Type B card compares to some of the fastest SD and microSD cards out there.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE PROFESSIONAL GOLD CFEXPRESS 256GB TYPE B

A product picture along with the company logo and the card's capacity and performance are all placed in front of the black and yellow box.

Some words about the product in 4 languages are placed at the rear of the box just under its performance numbers and above information about memory cards and of course the product serial number and barcode.

CFexpress Type B cards like the professional gold model i have here with me measure 38.50mm in length, 29.60mm in width and 3.80mm in thickness (just for the record Type A cards measure 28x20x2.8mm whereas Type C cards are expected to measure 74x54x4.8mm).

CFexpress cards use roughly the same connectivity as CompactFlash cards before them.

Turning the card over we see the country of origin (Longsys is a Chinese company) and several certifications.

As mentioned earlier for this review (and other CFexpress Type B cards) I'll be using the latest USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 card reader also by Lexar.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Memory cards are pretty much identical to flash drives so to make things easier for everyone I'll be using roughly the same testing methodology to successfully record achieved read and write data transfer numbers. The benchmark suites used for memory card tests are HD Tune Pro (Read - Write average and max speeds), AIDA 64 Engineer Edition (Average Linear Read / Random Read - Write performance), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (4GB Read / Write speeds) and ATTO (Average Read / Write speeds). Every test is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average performance numbers are recorded into the charts (0 = test was unable to complete).

   Tests are performed on the X79 test rig running Microsoft Windows 10 Pro installation on a HyperX Predator 480GB PCIe SSD with all updates installed up to the day of this review (for ATTO and Crystal Disk Mark cards are formatted using the NTFS file system – however partitions need to be removed for the write tests of both AIDA64 and HD Tune Pro).

* As of April 2020, I’ll be using the X299 test rig for SDXC & microSDXC UHS-II (and above) memory card reviews.
** As of March 2022 the Z590 test rig will be used for CFexpress memory cards.

TEST RESULTS

CONCLUSION

   Since the Professional Gold 256GB is the very first CFexpress card to reach the lab i decided to include 4 of the fastest SD and microSD cards I’ve tested to date in the charts to effectively showcase the vast gap in performance (once more CFexpress cards make their way here i will have dedicated charts) between different types/formats. Yes, CFexpress cards are not widely used right now and i don’t expect amateur photographers such as myself to go out and spend a vast amount of money on a compatible camera but for professionals the gap in read & write performance can obviously make a huge difference which is also why the even faster Type C cards are on the way.

   Expensive professional cameras come with expensive accessories and the latest CFexpress cards are not an exception. More specifically the Professional Gold CFexpress 256GB Type B card by Lexar currently retails for USD260.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 285.80Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) meaning over twice as much compared to the fastest UHS-II SD cards with the same capacity. Still, you can easily see the why from the charts and since the Lexar Professional Gold CFexpress 256GB Type B card is probably the fastest of that type out there today it deserves the Platinum Award.

PROS

- Impressive Performance (Up To 1750MB/s)
- Available Capacities (64/128/256/512GB)
- Limited Lifetime Warranty

CONS

- Price (For Some)