Lexar Professional CFExpess Type A Gold Series Memory Card and Reader Review

TEMPS, SUSTAINED WRITES AND TRUE DATA TESTING

TEMPERATURES

Two characteristics that became very important with the introduction of CFexpress as a mainstream storage medium were temperature and sustained write speeds.  We measure temperature by monitoring and updating a  Crystal DiskInfo Benchmark while a large 85GB 8K file transfer is being performed.  This is the extreme of what one might see in this environment.  An important aspect to remember is that the temperature results we obtain are the extreme.  They are the hottest the card got during any period of our testing which was constantly monitored.  It does not speak to the median or typical temperatures one might expect which would be around the low 30°C mark.

With his in mind, the highest temperature reached with the Lexar Professional was 80°C and there was no throttling of this card any time during our testing.  In comparison, the ProGrade Cobalt 160GB Type A Memory Card reached the same temps but had some serious throttling and data transfer failures as we will discuss below.

SUSTAINED WRITE PERFORMANCE

We determine sustained write performance by transferring a 85GB 8K media folder from the PC to the CFexpress Type A card.  This test is vital to those looking at digital storage for high end 4K and 8K video recording.

 

This result of 5828MB/s is very impressive and validates the VPG 400 designation on the card.  Looking back at the ProGrade Cobalt result, its performance dropped off significantly at one point and obtaining a steady sustained write result became impossible:

REAL WORLD FILE TRANSFER COMPARISON

Our Real World File Transfer Test is conducted through the transfer of data from one spot on the test drive to another to give us the truest of transfer speed results for that device.

It would be nice to have a comparable for this result, but unfortunately, the only competitor card that we have on hand could not complete these tests…which in itself says quite a bit for the Lexar Professional CFExpress Type A 160GB Gold Series Memory Card.

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

The Lexar Professional CFExpress Type A 160GB Gold Series Memory Card is all that it is professed to be and then some.  This card leads the way with industry leading speeds and our results demonstrated data transfer speeds as high as 938MB/s.  It is available in capacities of 80GB and 160GB and price…well… even we admit is very high. It is clearly the most expensive on the block.

Having said that, this card flew through our testing regimen where others would fail in sustained write and data transfer testing.  This is somewhat of a key point if you are looking to purchase a CFExpress Type A card and Lexar’s Limited Lifetime Guarantee makes things just that much better.  If I had the need for a CFExpress Type A card, this would be my only choice.

Check Lexar Pro Type A Gold Series Memory Card Pricing at Amazon