Photographers know all too well about the struggle, and it is, in fact, a real one: Shooting in RAW format or shooting lots of video footage, especially with readily available cameras enabling modern maverick filmmakers to shoot gung-ho, require faster write speeds to keep up, apart from huge storage space, of course.
Being one of the consummate leaders in the memory industry for quite a while, Sony knows how to best approach this conundrum. Hence, it has unveiled a timely solution: the world's fastest SD card there is, the SF-G Series, which are not only speedy but furiously tough as well.
Sony Has Created The World's Fastest SD Card
Sony's latest SD Card lineup, aimed at media professionals, herald write speeds of up to 299 Mbps — megabytes, mind you, and not megabits — with read speeds of up to 300 Mbps. The next highest write speed, for the record, is 260 Mbps, which is found on SanDisk's Extreme Pro series.
More than any SD card before it, Sony's SF-G cards will be able to deftly support quick-shooting cameras smoothly, on top of capturing 4K video without a hitch, apart from other technically demanding and storage intensive media usage there is. Additionally, a faster writing speed translates to shorter buffer clearing time, which is helpful in photographing fast-moving action. Naturally, photographers are going to have a field day with Sony's new memory cards.
"As the continuous shooting of higher-resolution images and adoption of 4K video with DSLR and mirrorless cameras increases, the inherent need for larger, faster and more dependable cards becomes apparent," said Viviano Cantu, VP for product marketing at Sony Americas Media and Energy Group.
"A longtime leader at the forefront of professional media, Sony has met these growing demands with the debut of the SF-G Series, which offers industry leading performance."
The Fastest And The Toughest SD Card
Apart from impressive write and read speeds, Sony's SF-G SD cards are also, surprisingly, shock proof, water and temperature resistant, on top of being resistant to X-rays, according to Sony. Internally, Sony has also got users' files covered because the SF-G lineup supports its free file rescue software, which is pretty self-explanatory.
Pricing And Availability
The cards will be available in 32 GB SDHC and 64 or 128 GB SDXC configurations, although the company hasn't offered any word on pricing yet. Sony has confirmed, however, that the SF-G cards will ship sometime in March, which will be available from the usual roster of retailers. By contrast, the aforementioned SanDisk cards are being offered for about $60 a pop, so take that however you will. But of course, the SF-G cards are technically superior, so it comes as no surprise if Sony ends up shipping them for a higher price point.
Additionally, as per TechRadar's report, Sony is also releasing a compatible high-speed SD card reader, the MRW-S1, complete with a USB 3.1 interface which supports UHS II for high-speed PC transfers.
Thoughts on Sony's SF-G Series of SD cards? Feel free to sound off in the comments section below!
