Lexar’s latest SD 8.0 card is too brisk for its own good — potentially dead, since no current device can take advantage of the card’s 1,700MB/s speed

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The Lexar High-Performance SD 8.0 card promises read and write speeds of up to 1700 MB/s and 1000 MB/s, respectively. PetaPixelThe recent SD 8.0 card is ahead of its time as it is not fully compatible with any device that uses this standard, especially cameras, which lowers its performance to the UHS-I standard.

Lexar recently released a series of flash cards, including a Stainless Steel variant in Gold and Silver Pro, that are UHS-II compliant. But the one that caught the eye was the SD 8.0 standard, which used PCIe 4.0 lanes to achieve that speed — much like its Lexar Professional CFexpress 4.0 card. That was possible because the recent standard allowed for theoretical transfer speeds of up to 2GB/s.

There’s a significant caveat. Only SD 8.0-compatible card readers or cameras can take advantage of the card’s speed. However, none exist since the standard was finalized a month ago. SD 8.0 is designed to apply multiple PCIe interfaces: PCIe Gen 4 x1, PCIe G3 x2, and PCIe Gen4 x2. While the SD card will work with current cameras and card readers, performance is downgraded to UHS-I at 30MB/s transfer speeds. So the whole point of buying a brisk SD card is to not apply it efficiently.

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The card is designed to perform similarly to its CFexpress 4.0 counterpart, such as the Lexar Professional series, in order to have similar read/write speeds that utilize PCIe 4.0. However, the similarity ends there, as neither device can take advantage of it. The SD Association introduced a recent standard using the same form factor but using a single PCIe lane. Lexar may have shown off the SD 8.0 card to show off its performance as a concept, but announcing it as a final product is puzzling. No other storage manufacturer has yet to show off any SD 8.0 cards.

Fast storage is crucial for cameras due to the increasing demand for high speed and huge capacity for 8K RAW recording or high resolution images with faster RAW burst speeds. This is where CF cards are preferred over SD cards. While SD cards are convenient, the advantages outweigh any benefits they may offer professionals. There is also the question of whether camera manufacturers will see the importance of implementing the recent SD standard sooner or later.

Despite the announcement, the card is not listed on Lexar’s website, although its recent stainless steel-based UHS-II SDXC cards are. We may not see SD 8.0 cards available, as no cameras or card readers take advantage of this capability, or if they ever will. However, only time will tell if the hopes of having brisk SD cards comparable to current CF cards will come to fruition. There’s always the SDUC standard for those who need a higher-capacity SD card.

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