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If you paid attention to the details of Sony’s announcement of the a7S III, you will have noticed that the camera packs dual twin-format memory card slots that accept an SD card or a new type of card with the clunky name CFexpress Type A. These next-gen cards have now been unveiled by Sony—along with the reader you’ll need to get the data off the cards.
Coming in 80GB and 180GB capacities, CFExpress Type A Tough cards offer maximum read speeds of 800MB/s and maximum write speeds of 700MB/s. Like the a7S III, Sony’s new USB 3.2 Gen 2 USB-C card reader accepts both SD and CFExpress Type A cards, and allows you to transfer data at up to 10Gbps, which should be sufficiently speedy to handle any UHS-II SD cards or CFExpress Type A cards available in the future.
In case you were wondering, the CFExpress cards that everyone else is using—like the Nikon Z7, Panasonic S1R and Canon EOS R5—is Type B. They have a higher theoretical maximum bandwidth of 2000MB/s, but they are also physically larger, and therein lies the reasoning behind Sony’s choice: It made it possible to develop a compact and convenient twin-format card slot. Sony’s new cards are a little shy of the Type A’s maximum theoretical transfer rate of 1000MB/s, but they are still more than double the 312MB/s maximum speed of a UHS-II SD card.
Available to preorder now, the 80GB and 160GB cards cost $200 and $400, respectively, while the card reader is priced at $120.
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