INTRODUCTION

   Even though i may not be lucky enough to own an CFexpress Type A/B/C compatible camera (don't really need one after all - still 8K recording sounds interesting) i can't avoid being intrigued by just how fast such cards can be. Lexar with their Gold and Diamond series has been doing extremely well in the market and why not, their cards are incredibly fast and available in multiple capacities. Still, Lexar is far from the only CFexpress Type A/B/C card manufacturer out there, in fact there are quite a few and so today I’ll be testing the 512GB Gold CFexpress Type B card by ProGrade Digital.

   The founders of ProGrade Digital are industry veterans in the removable storage and digital photography industries. Each, having spent time at leading companies such as Lexar and SanDisk, brings extensive expertise in the design, development, and manufacture of digital storage products, plus longstanding relationships with key manufacturing and supply chain partners. The company focuses exclusively on the development of memory cards, card readers, and workflow software for professional imaging markets. Flagship products, ProGrade Digital CFExpress, SDXC UHS-II, and CFast 2.0 are optimized to render maximum performance when paired with high-end DSLR, mirrorless, camcorder, and digital cinema cameras from manufacturers such as Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Sony, RED, and Blackmagic. ProGrade Digital memory cards expand the creative visions of cinema and photography professionals around the world.

   The Gold series of CFexpress Type B cards by ProGrade Digital includes 128GB/256GB/512GB/1TB capacity models all of which are based on the PCIe 3.0 NVMe v1.3 specification (Gen3x2) thus allowing for speeds of up to 1700MB/s in reads and up to 1300MB/s in writes (1TB model). The 512GB model that i have here with me today is capable of going all the way up to 1700MB/s in reads and 850MB/s in writes (800MB/s printed on the card itself but 850MB/s is reported on the box and online) and just like every other model of this line is covered by a 3-year limited warranty. The Cobalt is clearly their higher end line but the Gold seems to be even enough for 6K RAW video recording so let's see what real world numbers you can expect from the 512GB model.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

ProGrade uses a very small box to ship the CFexpress Type B card in the front of which has just their logo and the card model with its capacity.

At the rear ProGrade explains the why they are using such a tiny package and also list the capacity and performance of the card.

Along with the card ProGrade also ships a small piece of paper which promotes a trial of their Refresh Pro card monitoring tool.

THE GOLD 512GB 2.0

The card measures 29.6mm in width, 38.5mm in length and 3.8mm in thickness and at the top we find a sticker with the card name, company logo, capacity and advertised speeds (as already mentioned here it says 800MB/s for writes).

Several certifications are printed at the rear of the card.

Once again CFexpress Type B cards use three different contacts to achieve their performance.

ProGrade Digital asked me to use their USB 3.2 Gen 2.0 Dual-Slot Card Reader for this review and so that's what i did.

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

   ProGrade Digital may not be as popular as Lexar with the general public but their products are actually used by many professionals so I was very curious to see how their Gold 512GB CFexpress Type B 2.0 card would compare to Lexar’s Gold and Diamond class cards. By not using the exact same card reader this of course is not an 100% valid comparison but the results i did get for the most part placed the equivalent card by Lexar (Gold 256GB) clearly over the ProGrade Gold 512GB 2.0. Yes, the difference may not be massive between these two memory cards but it is there. On top of that ProGrade only covers their Gold line with a 3-year limited warranty which I have to admit doesn’t look as great as the limited lifetime one offered by Lexar (and others). So basically, what it all comes down to now is cost.

   Currently retailing for USD179.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 218.81Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) the Gold 512GB CFexpress Type B 2.0 card by ProGrade Digital is priced extremely well and significantly lower compared to the equivalent model by Lexar (by roughly 35%). Yes, for many people performance and warranty may be more important than price but the ProGrade model does very well when it comes to read and write performance and that along with its very tempting price tag are certainly more than enough for the Golden Award.

PROS

- Very Good Performance (Up To 1700MB/s)
- Available Capacities (128/256/512GB/1TB)
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- 3 Year Limited Warranty (Compared To The Competition)