Lexar Media, one of the top competitors in the flash memory industry, announced two new SD storage cards on Monday, including a 128GB capacity model that is now the world’s largest.
The 64 GB and 128 GB Lexar Professional Class 10 133x SDXC cards, announced just ahead of CES 2011, are part of a new high capacity specification which could allow for future storage of up to 2TB and data transfer rates of 104 MB per second.
“Designed for performance, this high-speed, Class 10 card is an excellent choice for sustained, rapid-fire shooting using the burst-mode feature of your camera. It also gives you the power to capture up to a full 48 hours of stunning 1080p HD video with your SDXC-compatible camera—all on a single 128GB card. What’s more, the card helps to dramatically accelerate workflow by providing quick transfer of images and video from your camera to computer,” reads the copy on Lexar’s website.
With higher capacity also comes higher prices, and Lexar’s new offerings are no exception. The 64GB SDXC card will retail for $399.99 while the 128GB will set photographers and filmmakers back $699.99.
But before you run out and drop hundreds on a new SDXC card, consider that many products will not yet support the SDXC specification, and Lexar will soon have some major competition.
As we reported last month, SanDisk, Nikon and Sony are working to standardize a CompactFlash 6.0 specification which will also allow for capacities of up to 2TB, but would increase transfer data up to 500MB/s via PCI-Express.
At this point it will likely not be consumers, but rather manufacturers who will decide which specification to support in their future products. While CF definitely has the speed advantage, SD does have a bit of a physical size advantage and may be easier for manufacturers to work into increasingly compact product designs. Time will tell which form factor comes out ahead in this race.
