Nextorage NX-B2PRO CFexpress 4.0 Type-B Cards Announced

Just read that earlier today Nextorage has announced their CFexpress 4.0 Type-B cards, the NX-B2PRO.

According to the official page, the NX-B2PRO comes in 4 capacities, and while all of them are VPG400 certified, they do have slightly varying max speeds and sustained speeds:

• 165GB : Max Read 3,900 MB/s, Max Write 3,600 MB/s, Min Sustained Write 3,400 MB/s

• 330GB : Max Read 3,900 MB/s, Max Write 3,600 MB/s, Min Sustained Write 3,400 MB/s

• 660GB : Max Read 3,700 MB/s, Max Write 3,600 MB/s, Min Sustained Write 3,400 MB/s

• 1330GB : Max Read 3,700 MB/s, Max Write 3,600 MB/s, Min Sustained Write 3,200 MB/s

CFexpress 4.0 specifications doubles the theoretical bandwidth of current CFexpress 2.0 cards (actual press release of CFe 4.0 here; you can read my write-up on it here), and while none of the current camera bodies are capable of using CFe 4.0 speeds in them, the standard being backwards compatible means that it does make sense to purchase a CFe 4.0 card for future proofing.

I have had very good experience with Nextorage cards so far, and their customer support was efficient and helpful when I contacted them prior to my first purchase with them to learn more about the cards, so I definitely am glad that they are one of the first few to have CFe 4.0 cards ready and available.

With this release, they now have a simple to understand line-up for CFe-B cards:

• B1SE - Standard CFe cards with decent max speeds, but low minimum sustained write speeds (discontinued)

• B2SE - Successor to B1SE; standard CFe cards with improved max write speeds and minimum sustained write speeds

• B1PRO - High performance pSLC CFe 2.0 cards with high max speeds and high minimum sustained write speeds.

• B2PRO - High performance pSLC CFe 4.0 cards with high max speeds and high minimum sustained write speeds.

B2SE cards do offer a really good cost performance per GB if you do not require high speeds for video or high fps shooting, and definitely would recommend them (especially the 512GB version) for anyone looking for a high capacity card that is plenty fast.

The B1PRO is a great card to use with the Z8 (and I would assume the Z9 too), as even shooting in moderate bursts at high FPS in lossless compressed RAWs, the buffer does not stutter and remains responsive throughout its operations. It also remains relatively cool throughout - both during shooting and when offloading from the reader to the PC.

The B2PRO with higher speed ratings, almost double in fact, means that using them in current equipment now should make them run much cooler than the B1PRO since the speeds are way below their theoretical threshold.

Which brings me to wonder the following:

• Will there be a B3SE based on CFe 4.0 standards too? This could be a good way to get high speed high capacity cards with good cost/GB ratio.

• Will future Z cameras come with a CFe-B primary slot, and a SD+CFe-A hybrid secondary slot? If CFe-A slots run at CFe 4.0 specifications it would be performing at current CFe-B speeds now, so not much compromise on speeds need to be made.

Anyway definitely looking forward to reading B2PRO’s reviews, and keeping my eyes on it when it is time to replace or add more cards to my kit.

CompactFlash Association’s VPG Certified Card List

Just thought it might be good to share it here (and for my own personal reference too).

CompactFlash Association (CFA), the body which sets the standards for all things related to CompactFlash, has recently published a list of cards which have passed their VPG tests.

VPG, or Video Performance Guarantee, is a standard set by CFA for CFexpress cards (both Type A and Type B) which indicates the minimum sustained write speeds when writing to the card continuously. Cards which pass the tests set by CFA are awarded a VPG200 (minimum 200MB/s) or VPG400 (minimum 400MB/s) certification (as of writing only these two levels are available).

The VPG ratings do look to be on the conservative side, as most of the cards (especially the pSLC ones) are definitely capable of much higher sustained write speeds, and even the current generation TLC ones do report having good sustained write speeds too. I guess the VPG ratings take into account writing the entire card from empty to full continuously and making sure there are no frame drops throughout the entire write process?

While the testing methods are not transparent, having an official list direct from CFA do bring about a peace of mind when purchasing new cards as it will act as a good reference to counter manufacturers just blatantly sticking any labels they want on their cards.

And since I am on this topic, while it is always nice to grab a good deal, be wary of no-brand cards or never-heard-of cards. It is not worth it to risk losing images, or worse frying your cameras just to save a bit on the cards.

(If you’re interested, I have an entry previously written about the cards I am using currently. Don’t worry there are no affiliate links or ads.)

CFexpress 4.0 Specifications Announced

Just last week CompactFlash Association (CFA) announced the new standards for next-generation CFexpress 4.0 cards.

The new specifications will double the speed of current CFe cards (known as CFe 2.0 specs; don’t ask me what happened to CFe 3.0 I guess they just wanted to line-in the card specs with the PCIe version specs lol).

Now why is this exciting?

Firstly nearly all high end cameras now use CFe cards, but specifically the Type-B cards since they provide the best cost-size-performance ratio.

However Type-B cards do have a downside - it requires a special slot by itself (which is usually back-compatible with XQD specifications unless you’re using a Canon), and the slot while not as humongous as the old CF slots, definitely take up real estate as heat dissipation is a big concern for fast cards.

Enter Type-A cards, which have similar physical dimensions to the normal SD cards. This allows a single SD-card slot to accept either a SD card when inserted one-way, or accept a CFe-Type A card when inserted the other way.

Sony’s one of the major manufacturers doing it this way, and while it’s really a good move to bring CFe speeds to a higher end body while maintaining backwards compatibility with SD cards if needed, the cost-performance ratio is really bad as there’s only 1 manufacturer using it for consumer products now - Type-A cards are shunned by the other manufacturers due to the lack of speed (it’s only half that of CFe-B).

However now with CFe 4.0 specs, the Type-A cards have a theoretical max speed on CFe 2.0 Type-B cards - meaning whatever applications that CFe 2.0 Type-B could handle before without issues, the CFe 4.0 Type-A should be able to handle it gracefully too.

So just to put some numbers in for easier understanding:

A typical 45MP RAW file (14-bit lossless compressed) is 50MB

A fast camera can shoot 20FPS at full resolution = 50MB * 20shots = 1GB/s of data moving through

Currently the cameras when paired with pSLC CFe-B cards with high minimum sustained write speeds (usually in 1.3-1.5GB/s range) can fire away at 20fps all day and the camera internal memory buffer won’t fill up at all as the shots are offloaded as fast as they’re taken.

However using a CFe-A card, which have typical max write of around 800MB/s and sustained write of around 500MB/s some stuttering might happen as the buffer starts filling up and you will lose the 20fps.

The even larger culprit is the SD cards - certain camera models have a SD card slot as a 2nd card slot, and when a SD card is placed inside, it bottlenecks the entire process (if you’re writing to two cards at the same time) as write speeds for SD cards max out at 95MB/s (UHS-I) or 280MB/s (UHS-II). And also not to mention the disgusting pricing strategy of UHS-II cards.

So now back to the topic, the reason I’m really excited about the new CFe standards is because now manufacturers can have more motivation to put a hybrid SD+CFe-A slot as their 2nd slot, to maintain backwards compatibility and ease of use with SD cards, and yet not sacrifice too much in performance and speeds when needed to do a 2-card simultaneous shoot by using the Gen 4 Type-A cards.

Of course one can always argue that no matter the generation, the Type-B cards will always be twice as fast as Type-A cards, and the new Type-B cards will just open up even higher FPS shooting modes. Which brings me to the point - would you rather have an inferior SD-only slot as your backup slot where you’re locked down at 5FPS or so, or a hybrid SD+TypeA slot backup which can still shoot at 20FPS RAW which is the gold standard right now?

tl;dr I find this exciting news as on occasions I spray at 10-20 fps at my cat lol

List of Recommended CFexpress Cards for Nikon Cameras

Just want to put this list out here as a reference for anyone who needs information regarding CFexpress cards for Nikon cameras.

Note that this is not an actual in-depth review with synthetic speed test benchmarks (which are widely available online), but rather from my personal experience from using the cards on a regular basis.

(Side note: The official list of recommended cards by Nikon can be found here.)

• Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB (Exact model used: SDCFE-064G-GN4NN) [Not Recommended]
  Sandisk is a renowned brand with a very good track record for reliability, and I’ve been using their products (SD cards and the old school CF cards) in my cameras for as long as I can remember.
  While I have nothing but praises to say about their Extreme Pro line of SD and CF cards, unfortunately I did not have good experience with their CFexpress cards. The 64GB CFexpress card that I used gets hot really fast, like literally to the point where you feel unsafe to touch it with your bare hands. This causes thermal throttling issues to kick in many times even though I was not shooting at high burst rates, and several times it caused my camera to freeze up as the thermal throttling caused buffer errors, and entire series of shots were lost as the buffer could not write to the card before the freeze.
  Some other people recommend the higher capacity cards (256GB and above) would not have thermal throttling issues, but personally I’d try to avoid this card for Nikon cameras, as another key thing to take note of when purchasing is that the -xxxIN suffix cards will totally not work in Nikon cameras at all.
  [[Tested in Z6 and Z7]]

• Delkin Devices Power 128GB (Exact model used: DCFX1-128) [Highly Recommended]
  Delkin Devices have been around for a little while now, but unfortunately in Japan they do not have a large presence so I did not know of them until fairly recently. I contacted their customer service to enquire about their products and was met with very helpful and warm responses, which led me to buy a Power 128GB card to test out. It’s very well-built and feels very solid in your hands, has reliable read and write speeds and I have not encountered any thermal throttling issues so far. I’ve used it in both work situations as well as personal casual shots, and have not encountered any errors with it yet.
  One thing to take note is that Delkin cards do not come with a recovery software bundled - they do partner with a recovery software company (LC Technology) should you need to recover files from your card, but it requires a paid license so just keep that in mind if you prefer to have a recovery software on standby.
  [[Tested in Z6, Z7, Z6II]]

• Delkin Devices Power 1TB G4 (Exact model used: DCFXBP1TBG4) [Still in testing]
  Just received the newly launched 1TB G4 card, and am still running it through normal usage and long term tests before reaching any conclusions.

• Nextorage NX-B1PRO 165GB (Exact model used: NX-B1PRO165G) [Highly Recommended]
  Nextorage is an up-and-coming brand, established by ex-engineers and staff from Sony’s memory storage arm. I was personally intrigued by them as they do have the technical expertise and experience in flash memory products, as well as being very aggressive and pushing boundaries of such products. I managed to grab a B1PRO 165GB card during a sale event, and am highly satisfied with it. It has a robust and solid build, and has a very high minimum sustained write speed of 1800MB/s, and has not encountered any thermal throttling issues in my usage with it thus far. While I can’t exactly objectively quantify the minimum sustained write speed that they claim, I have not encountered any hiccups in using it in my Z8 at high burst rates of 14-bit lossless raw files. The card does run a little warm when shooting long bursts, but does not go into the “are you sure this termperature is OK??” type of hot at all.
  [[Tested in Z6, Z7, Z6II, Z8]]

Delkin Devices CFe Type-B Cards

I had recently purchased a CFe-B 128GB card from Delkin's Power lineup, and boy am I really impressed with it.

So a little background story first. You can tl;dr this entire section if you just want to read about my thoughts on the Delkin card.

When I got my first Z6, it came with a free Nikon 64GB XQD, and I got a Sony 64GB XQD (G-series Class-E) as a backup/spare during a fire sale as the Class-F just came out.

After the firmware for CFe-B cards came out, I decided to go with SanDisk since I have been using their memory products (CF/SD/portable SSD) all the while and have had good experiences with them.

But unfortunately their CFe launch was a disaster to speak - their initial card readers had problems initializing and recognizing cards, and their first version of CFe cards could not work on Nikon bodies. I waited until Nikon listed SanDisk as a supported brand before purchasing a 64GB -NN series CFe-B card.

While the card is officially tested and supported by Nikon, the card reader was still an issue as many people were still complaining about problematic SanDisk readers, so after reading online I chanced upon Delkin's CFe-B reader (DDREADER-54), and while it’s a totally new brand to me, many long term users have raved about their products, and the card reader itself seem to have gotten wide praise as well, so I decided to give it a try.

The card reader has performed flawlessly so far - the nearly all-metal build is robust, reads really fast, and has a cap (although could be nicer if tighter) to prevent ingress of dust - totally satisfied and happy with the purchase.

But the same cannot be said for the SanDisk CFe-B card that I got - every now and then there seem to be duplicate images inside the card (exact same image with exact same file name in exact same file size.. don't ask me how it happens), my camera freezes occasionally when doing burst shots (and when it happens the entire burst is not saved), and the most frightening part is the card runs really hot.

So a while ago I was fiddling with the idea of getting a higher capacity card for my cameras, and decided to go with Delkin and try out their cards since there are a lot of positive feedback about them.

And it so happened that when I was toying with the idea of purchasing a new card, Delkin's official distributor in Japan (whose service is fantastic and I highly recommend getting your cards from them if you live here!) started a Summer sale campaign, so that pushed me to click on the shiny check-out button.

I was initially torn between the Power line and the Black line, but figured out that since I don’t shoot videos and I don’t burst at max FPS it might be overkill to get the Black line, and ta-da I ended up with the 128GB Power.

As I mentioned at the start of the post, I'm really happy and satisfied with the card.

(For those of you who tl;dr you can start reading here)

Here are the key points that impressed me:

• The cards feels very robust and well built - the back is covered in a metal casing which envelops the sides of the card, as compared to just a small metal plate on the back on the SanDisk or my XQD cards.

• Performs at expected speeds and my camera hasn't had lock-up issues so far with it.

• Runs way cooler than the SanDisk - similar or just very slightly warmer than the XQD cards when used in burst sequences.

• Easy to register warranty and eligible for 48-hour replacement program

• Nice plastic casing provided for the card (similar to the XQD ones)

And as mentioned earlier, the official distributor here works really fast and is very efficient too, which further elevates the entire experience with their products. I can foresee myself going to Delkin exclusively for my CFe-B card needs from now on.