It's become an all-too familiar story: the global memory chip shortage causing the price of memory cards and SSDs to skyrocket. This situation has been ongoing for almost a year now, and the latest news suggests prices might not fall for some time.

According to Kwak Noh-jung, CEO of Korean chip giant SK Hynix, the global memory chip market "will face unprecedented supply shortages in 2027". Furthermore, Kwak predicts that the chip shortage is likely to continue past 2030. Other analysts agree that the chip shortage won't be over soon: UBS predicts the global DRAM market will remain undersupplied until at least Q2 2028, while Bank of America estimates that datacenter capital expenditure will hit $851 billion this year and rise to around $1.15 trillion next year – in other words, the demand for memory will rise over the next 12 months.

The chip shortage is due to the unprecedented demand for HBM (high bandwidth memory) chips, which are being voraciously consumed by AI datacenters. SK Hynix produces around 58% of the global HBM chip supply and is investing heavily in in new semiconductor production facilities, with $4 billion allocated to build an advanced chip packaging plant in Indiana.

It should be noted that high bandwidth memory isn't actually used in products like consumer memory cards and SSDs, yet these products have still seen huge price rises as a direct result of the HBM chip shortage. The reason for this is likely due to chip manufacturers diverting manufacturing capacity to the more lucrative HBM sector, and away from the NAND flash used in memory cards. And it's this reduced supply of NAND chips that has caused the price of SD and CFexpress cards to increase so dramatically.

So if you’re in need of a new memory card, check out what we rate as the best memory cards for your camera, with the best prices available right now.

Story credit: NewsBytes

Back in August 2024 SanDisk announced that it had produced the first-ever 8 terabyte SD card and the world's first 4TB MicroSD card. Retail availability was set for 2025, but that came and went. However, it's now been confirmed at Computex 2026 that samples are almost ready to ship.

Read more:
The best memory cards for your camera
The best CF express cards in 2026

Both cards will receive the SDUC designation. This is a new SD class exclusively for cards over 2TB in capacity (which is the current limit for existing SDXC cards). Sounds impressive, but the reality could be more inconvenient. SDUC cards can only be used in devices that specifically support SDUC memory cards, so you won't be able to stick an SDUC card into any old camera with an SD slot. We had the same situation around 15 years ago when SDXC replaced SDHC cards with their 32GB capacity limit.

And just because these new SDUC cards boast a huge capacity, don't expect them to set any speed records. Both new cards will use the UHS-I standard, meaning they’ll have a theoretical maximum transfer speed of around 104 MB/s.

There's also the issue of whether anyone actually needs such a high data capacity on a single SD card. SD is no longer the format of choice for high-performance cameras, as CFexpress has now far surpassed it for read and write speed. SanDisk's 8TB SD card being UHS-I further impedes its real-world utility, rendering it only practical for mid-range cameras topping out at high bit rate 1080p video, which itself doesn't demand a card as big as 8 terabytes.

All this then begs the question: who's actually going to buy a mega-capacity SD or microSD card right now? With today's hyper-inflated memory pricing, such cards are guaranteed to be incredibly expensive, yet few - if any - cameras will currently support them.

Hot on the heels of the Trump T1, Delkin Devices has launched its own take on patriotic tech: the Valor PRO CFexpress 4.0 Type B memory card. Delkin has always been a proudly American memory company, but Valor PRO emphasizes this more than other cards in the Delkin range. Aside from the Star-Spangled Banner appearing on the card itself, Delkin states Valor PRO cards are "Proudly Assembled in the USA", in addition to being designed and extensively validated at Delkin's facility in Poway, CA. Delkin claims that:

"Standard memory cards are built to mass-market commercial standards (Class 2), which tolerate hidden internal defects. Valor PRO CFexpress 4.0 Type B cards are held to (Class 3) aerospace and medical requirements."

This entails using an industrial underfill process that mechanically bonds the memory chips to the PCB, rather than relying solely on electrical connections. This then makes the card more resistant to drops and vibrations. Delkin also asserts that by assembling each card in the US, you get better component control and traceability; something which is backed up by every card having its own unique serial number, along with a lifetime warranty. Should a card fail, Delkin will replace it within 48 hours and cover the cost of shipping both ways.

As for performance, Valor PRO CFexpress 4.0 Type B cards can achieve a stellar 3700 MB/s maximum read speed, and an equally impressive 2800MB/s peak write rate. Minimum sustained write speed is rated at 1840MB/s, easily qualifying the card for VPG800 certification - that's comfortably enough speed to enable high bit-rate 8K RAW recording. Delkin has also tested Valor PRO cards in dozens of CFexpress Type B cameras to ensure compatibility, including all Canon, Nikon and Panasonic Type B bodies.

The Delkin Devices Valor PRO CFexpress Type B card is available in a single capacity option - 1TB - and can currently be had for an introductory price of $589.99 at B&H, or £529 at Wex.

ProGrade Digital has launched a new, super-fast CFexpress Type A card. Branded Iridium, the card is available in 512GB and 1TB capacities and is capable of a blisteringly-quick 1800MB/s max read speed, and an equally impressive 1700MB/s peak write rate.

But more importantly for video capture is how fast a memory card can maintain its write speed. Here the new Iridium Type A card really stands out thanks to its 1500MB/s sustained write speed. This speed is achieved thanks to its CFexpress 4.0 architecture, which enables performance that's twice as fast as first-generation Type A cards.

ProGrade's CFexpress Type A product range already includes an Iridium card, but that is an older version which comes in 480GB and 960GB capacities. Though its maximum speed is identical to the new 512GB and 1TB versions, sustained write rate is significantly slower at 800MB/s.

Another key difference between the old and new Iridium Type A cards is their VPG certification. Where the old version was VPG200 certified, the new card boasts dual VPG certification, as it complies with both the VPG400 and VPG800 standards.

VPG (Video Performance Guarantee) is a tightly-controlled testing procedure and certification that guarantees a memory card can sustain a minimum write speed when recording video. Plenty of SD and CFexpress cards have VPG200 or VPG400 certification, meaning they're guaranteed to maintain a minimum 200MB/s or 400MB/s write speed. VPG800 certification is rather more special though, only being awarded to a select few CFexpress cards. It guarantees that the new ProGrade Iridium card will sustain a minimum 800MB/s write speed during video capture.

You may wonder why the new Iridium card is labelled with VPG400 and VPG800 ratings, as surely the faster rating should simply override the slower one? The reason the cards sport both labels is because VPG800 doesn't actually replace the older VPG200/400 ratings; it instead supplements them. This is due to the VPG800 rating being part of the new Video Performance Guarantee Profile 5.0, released by the CompactFlash Association in February 2025. VPG-5 is not backward compatible with VPG Profile 4.0 (which covers the existing VPG200 and VPG400 ratings). As such, a VPG800 card may not work with a camera recording mode that requires VPG200 or VPG400.

This is because to achieve the higher sustained write speeds of VPG800, such a card must first be preconditioned (initialized) with low-level formatting. This preconditioning, which has not previously been necessary, essentially resets the card to its original factory condition, permanently deleting any previous data from the card. This in turn means the card is a perfectly clean 'blank slate' which has a large, contiguous storage space, onto which a continuous video data stream can be written at high speed. There's therefore no risk of recording speed being reduced or interrupted by the memory controller needing to allocate part of the recording to a different sector of NAND flash in order to work around any pre-existing data stored on the card.

This sounds perfectly reasonable but there's a catch: simply deleting a video from the card doesn't recover the corresponding storage space for future VPG800 recordings - you're limited to whatever remaining storage space is left after the last preconditioning (low-level formatting). To restore the full capacity of the card for more VPG800 recording, you must again perform a preconditioning. Thankfully this procedure doesn't appear to be necessary for general use, or for VPG400 recordings.

For more information on these latest VPG standards, and why preconditioning is necessary, check out the official guidance from the CompactFlash Association.

The new ProGrade Digital Iridium CFexpress Type A card is available to pre-order from B&H. Expect to pay $569.99 for the 512GB capacity, while the 1TB version costs $949.99.

OWC has launched a new accessibly-priced CFexpress Type B card: Atlas Core. This timing couldn't have been better, as with memory card prices skyrocketing due to the global NAND flash shortage, there's sure to be big demand for less expensive cards.

The OWC Atlas Core CFexpress Type B card comes in one capacity - 256GB - and is priced at $279.99. At the time of writing there are 256GB Type B cards that cost less, but all are slower than the Atlas Core. OWC’s new entry is speedy thanks to its CFexpress 4.0 specification, giving it incredibly fast 3571MB/s max read and 2227MB/s max write speeds. The card is also rated with a 368MB/s sustained write rate. This isn’t the fastest, but it does comfortably exceed VPG200 certification, enabling 4K RAW and 8K compressed recording. The Atlas Core card is therefore suitable for professional and hobbyist photographers, videographers, and content creators.

Atlas Core is designed for Canon EOS R, Fujifilm GFX, Nikon Z, and Panasonic S mirrorless cameras, as well as Nikon DSLRs like the D5, D500 and D850 which were originally designed for XQD. Every card is backed by a three-year warranty, and with OWC’s Free Innergize software, you also get built-in card health monitoring, performance restoration, and firmware updates.

While it may not be the absolute fastest Type B card around, the vast majority of Type B-compatible cameras won’t even come close to maxing out even an entry-level Type B card:

“Most photographers and creators don’t need the most expensive card on the planet. They need the card they can trust when the moment actually matters … Atlas Core was built for that real-world creator who wants professional confidence without paying for speed they’ll never fully use.” Larry O’Connor, Founder and CEO, Other World Computing (OWC)

OWC Atlas Core CFexpress 4.0 Type B 256GB memory card: Buy now from B&H

Memory cards might not be the most exciting purchase, but they’re indispensable - without one, even the best camera is useless. I always stock up on SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I cards, not for their size but for their reliability, great value, and the fact that they’re almost always discounted ahead of Amazon Prime’s big camera sales.

• See all of today's Amazon Prime camera deals
• See all memory deals across Amazon

Sure, 64GB might not seem like much in an era of 8K video and high-resolution sensors, but for everyday photography, it’s plenty - and at this price, they’re practically impossible to resist.

It’s become something of a ritual for me now. I ignore memory cards for most of the year and wait until Prime Day - or the days leading up to it - when prices start to tumble, and full-price suddenly looks ridiculous. SanDisk’s 64GB Ultra cards often drop into impulse-buy territory, and if you need more room, the 128GB and 256GB versions usually follow suit at prices that feel like a steal.

The real trick is having spares. I never head out without at least two or three extras in my bag. Cards fill up, fail, or simply vanish, and having backups means you’re never caught short - no deleting files on the fly or missing a shot while swapping cards. And when you’ve picked them up for less than the cost of a pub lunch, there’s no reason not to stock up.

SanDisk Ultra cards have always hit the sweet spot for me. They’re not overkill for everyday or even semi-professional use, yet they’re fast, reliable, and built for real-world shooting, whether that’s documenting family life, covering events, or spending an afternoon out with the camera. I’ve filled more of them than I can count, and not one has ever let me down.

So why pay full whack? Prime Day is basically a once-a-year restock event for me. I buy cards like people buy batteries at Christmas – just enough to get me through another season or two. It’s a small investment in peace of mind, and at Prime Day prices, it's hard to make a case against it.

If you shoot regularly and you’re not taking advantage of these sales, you’re missing a trick. The SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I is always on offer, and if you need more storage, the 128GB and 256GB versions are rarely far behind. Just wait for the price to drop… and buy!

Shop the memory card

With fast transfer speeds, reliable performance and a price that’s hard to ignore, the SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I is a smart addition to any camera bag – ideal for everyday shooting, and right now, it’s cheap enough to pick up without hesitation.

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Don't forget – the best memory cards need the best memory card readers to get the best out of them!

I’m so used to SD, microSD and CFexpress cards as gold standard removable media for my digital camera of choice – not to mention wireless transfer – that it’s easy to forget about all the failed physical formats previously presented to data-hungry photographers.

If you’ve taken an image with a digital camera over the past 25 years, as I have, you’ll be familiar with a roll call of formats that were once the must-have, but have now disappeared, among them SmartMedia and xD cards – both favored by Fuji point-and-shoots – along with Sony’s proprietary Memory Stick and, for more serious users with larger cameras, CompactFlash. The latter gave way to CFexpress cards and the XQD format in the 2010s, just slightly thicker than a SD card but offering much faster speeds than CF.

To this list of gone but unforgotten formats we can add the bonkers late 90s idea of Sony Mavica ‘compact’ cameras recording to 3.5-inch floppy disks and subsequently 8cm Mini CD-Rs. The thinking at the time was solid – circumnavigate the ‘chain of pain’ with a media format that I could take straight out of my camera and slot into my PC drive. Those nervous about the ‘newness’ of digital photography back then were presented with something familiar and unthreatening, if ultimately impractical.

First introduced in 1995, SmartMedia was one of the first digital memory formats I encountered switching from film to digital photography, intended at the time to be a flash (memory) alternative to the floppy disk. Recently reacquainting myself with a FinePix 6900 Zoom from 2001, I’d forgotten how comically huge SmartMedia looks next to SD and microSD cards today. SmartMedia’s capacity maxed out at 128MB, which quickly made it obsolete in the race for more pixels. Plus, its exposed gold contact pins and sender dimensions made the cards more fragile that what quickly came to replace them.

In my world, that replacement was the much smaller and tougher xD memory card, jointly introduced by Fujifilm and Olympus in 2002 and able to offer quite a jump in capacity. Almost a third of the physical size of SmartMedia, xD cards also enabled the cameras that supported the format – mainly from Olympus and Fuji but also several Kodak models – to themselves become more compact, and thus desirable.

However, Panasonic and SanDisk’s introduction of Secure Digital / SD, which first hit the market with a modest 8MB capacity in 2000, eventually meant that xD disappeared by 2009. In the race to accommodate larger data demands, SD spawned SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) in 2005, plus SDXC (Secure Digital eXtended Capacity) in 2009. As, simultaneously, camera phones were getting more sophisticated, microSD cards were launched primarily for mobile devices in 2005 and continues to be widely used 20 years on.

Available alongside these formats for a short while and intended as an exclusive revenue driver for Sony digital cameras, was the electronics giant’s chewing gum-shaped Memory Stick format. First introduced in 1998, by 2010 Sony was being forced to bow to consumer pressure and offer compatibility with SD cards instead. I can recall an audible sigh of relief at the time from consumers confused by all the competing formats.

Again, it was because SD offered a higher storage capacity, faster read/write speeds, plus more affordable production costs – and that unlike Memory Stick, was non-proprietary – that saw its widespread adoption and market dominance, that continues over a quarter of a century later.

Fast forward to 2026 and I’m just grateful that my card reader and laptop no longer need multiple slots to accommodate the many bewildering, but now redundant, memory card variants still rattling around in a shoebox I have at home.

Check out the best memory card options available for today's digital cameras

It's becoming an all too familiar story: a memory card manufacturer announces an upcoming price increase. A few weeks ago Prograde Digital warned it would raise prices in May, and now OWC is following suit. In most cases the expected price increases are, however, reported to be relatively modest, rising by an average of 6% relative to April pricing.

The products in OWC's memory card portfolio most affected are CFexpress 4.0 cards, including the OWC 480GB Atlas Pro CFexpress 4.0 Type A card and the 2TB Atlas Ultra CFexpress 4.0 Type B card. These will both be subject to a 14% price hike, increasing by $40 and $150, respectively. And if you're after a 960GB Atlas Pro CFexpress 4.0 Type A card, that's set to cost $629.99, up from its current price of $569.99. Thankfully OWC's CFexpress 2.0 cards, along with many of its SD cards, will not receive increases (this time), though how long this will last remains to be seen.

However, it's particularly bad news if you're in the market for a new portable SSD. The price of a OWC 1TB Express 1M2 USB4 External SSD will jump 30%, increasing from $329.99 to $429.99. The 8TB version of the same drive will see a 21% price hike, going from an already hefty $1,729.99 to an eye-watering $2,099.99. Elsewhere in the OWC SSD range, prices are increasing by between 3% and 20%. And remember, all these percentage increases are measured against April pricing. We've already seen prices rising steadily since the start of the year, making these latest jumps even harder to stomach.

But it should be noted that this is an industry-wide problem and certainly not confined to OWC. Every manufacturer of products that use flash memory - memory cards, SSDs, RAM, etc - has hiked prices dramatically in 2026. The cause of these spiralling costs continues to be the unstoppable rise of AI. AI data processing centers devour high-bandwidth memory and fast SSD storage, causing AI companies to buy up huge stocks of solid state memory. This in turn is having a knock-on effect in other sectors that require DRAM and NAND flash memory, such as the memory card industry. Memory card manufacturers like OWC then have to fight for the remaining memory stock after the AI tech giants like Google, Meta, Nvidia and Open AI have paid top dollar to fuel their data centers. And when demand is high, prices go up, resulting in the ever-increasing memory card prices we're now being faced with.

Samsung Electronics – the largest memory chipmaker in the world – is warning that the memory shortage driven by storage-hungry AI will likely continue to worsen into 2027.

The insight comes from Samsung’s quarterly financial results, which have the chipmaker posting an all-time high for quarterly revenue of KRW 133.9 trillion. That’s about $90 billion / £67 billion / AU$126 billion / CA$124 billion at current exchange rates.

Samsung says that customers have already begun placing orders for 2027 amid concerns over chip shortages. “Based on the orders received so far, the supply gap relative to 2027 demand is expected to widen even further compared to 2026,” the head of Samsung’s memory business Kim Jae-june said during the earnings call.

The company’s memory division was responsible for 93.7 percent of the first quarter's operating profit. But even within the same company, the report shows the effect the limited supply has on other electronics. For example, Samsung’s mobile division profit dropped as the segment warned of the increased cost of memory required to build those smartphones.

The report comes as photographers, videographers, and content creators are already seeing the effects of the increased demand for storage sparked by the rise of AI. Memory card prices have already tripled in some instances, for example.

Some memory card makers, including ProGrade, have indicated that memory card prices will be increasing.

Lexar has indicated the change could be long-term. “We have to accept that this situation could be long-term because the industry has shifted to a new era,” a Lexar representative told Digital Camera World earlier this year.

The effect plays a role in more than just memory cards and hard drives, however. Memory is essential to building the processors in the cameras themselves. Canon, for example, says that it has already secured most of the memory that it needs for 2026, but still expects a cost increase of about $50.3 billion yen – that’s about $318 million / £235 million / AU$445.5 million / CA$435.6 million at current exchange rates.

For photographers, the price increase is a double whammy – not only are creators paying more for memory, but the cause is the artificial intelligence that generates images trained, in many cases, on unpaid images scraped from the internet.

While companies like Samsung are predicting that AI-related storage pressure will only get worse in the next year, that’s only a prediction based on current conditions and the orders that have already started trickling in for 2027. The insight, however, may encourage creators to treat memory cards like expensive cameras and house them in protective cases – and not wait if a memory need is on the horizon.

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I’m currently working on a review of the crown jewel in OM System’s extensive lens line-up, the M.Zuiko 150-400mm F4.5 TC1.25x IS PRO. One of the places where I decided to test the lens was WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre. So, the night before, I cleaned the camera and optics, packed my camera bag, charged my batteries and formatted my memory cards. Heck, I even went so far as to separate my batteries from the OM System OM-1 Mark II to prevent any drainage (not that they would be left in there nearly long enough for that to happen). My point is, the preparation was meticulous.

When I got to Slimbridge, I popped a battery in the camera, switched it on and received an error message for memory card slot 1. Occasionally, I’ll end up talking to a photographer who will proudly announce that they’ve never experienced any trouble with SD cards, and I can’t help but wonder, have you only taken, like, 10 photos in your entire life or something!?

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had an SD card fail on me. Thank goodness this time it was at the beginning of the shoot. There’s nothing more heartbreaking than inserting a memory card into your computer and finding out that the files are corrupt. Maybe you’re sitting there thinking, Mike, what the heck are you doing with your memory cards? You mean you don’t just chuck them loose in the bottom of your daily commute rucksack, jostling against your MacBook Pro and condensation-covered water bottle?

Seriously, though, my memory cards live in one of those little hard-shell cases you can find on Amazon, but I’m beginning to think my colleague, Sebastian Oakley, has a point: “I NEVER remove a memory card from a camera.”

I remember when Nikon launched its first full-frame mirrorless cameras, the Nikon Z6 and Nikon Z7, and they only had a single XQD card slot. I’m not surprised plenty of wedding photographers were like: Um, how about no… Suffice to say, Nikon fixed that oversight when it released the Nikon Z6 II and Nikon Z7 II and has been committed to providing back-up storage for every full-frame mirrorless since, going so far as to include a secondary microSD card slot in both the ultra-slim Nikon Zf and Nikon ZR.

XQD and CFExpress cards are a different story. I still wouldn’t want to rely on a single card for a professional shoot, but they are more reliable than SD cards. Something I used to do was renew my SD cards every now and again and use the older ones as backups or for casual shoots. But the problem we have nowadays is that even SD cards are becoming very expensive.

How to safeguard against an SD card failure

So, what can you do to increase your chances of an SD card failure? For starters, invest in decent SD cards. I will admit that my most recent card to fail was a Sandisk card, but I own more Sandisk cards than any other brand, and they get the most use. Most of the cards I’ve had fail in the past have been very old or from less-reliable brands.

As such, Sandisk is still one of the best memory card brands out there, alongside other gold-tier manufacturers such as Lexar and Samsung. Any card has the ability to fail, and with most known brands, you should be in fairly good hands. I’m telling you to steer clear of SD cards with random brand names that might come free with a cheap camera bag or tripod that you’ve bought on Amazon. Some camera manufacturers even list the memory card brands that they rate for their cameras, so check that out too.

Secondly, look after your SD cards. I’ve already mentioned this, but chucking them loose in a camera bag to rattle around isn’t going to help their longevity. Keep them inside your camera or safely stored in a hardshell case. In addition, don’t jam them into your camera or card reader. The contacts are the most exposed part of the card, so do everything you can to mitigate damaging them.

It goes without saying that if you have a dual-card slot, you can use the secondary slot as a backup. And for single-slot cameras, you have two choices. Invest in a nice big card with room to store all of your images on and take Seb’s advice and only retrieve images using a USB cable so that the card never leaves the camera. Or, invest in multiple smaller SD cards, so you’re forced to frequently change your card when shooting. While I suppose this increases the likelihood of experiencing a failure – or loss – if the worst happens, you will lose a smaller portion of your images.

And finally, back up your images as soon as you can. Don’t leave it until the next day; relieve your mind of that nagging feeling that you really should back up your images by backing them up. That said, do wait for a suitable moment. Standing right next to a river in a downpour is not the time to get your card reader out.

If all else fails, maybe carry around a four-leaf clover and never step on a crack.

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For more memory card horror stories: My dog ate my memory card... but the images survived! If you're thinking you should probably back up your work, here are the best external hard drives for photographers. And if you want the memory card embodiment of Captain Scarlet, check out the Lexar ARMOR GOLD SDXC UHS-II memory card review.

Lexar has teased a what it claims is the fastest 2TB microSD card available. Until now 2TB microSD cards have focussed mostly on capacity over speed, but the 2TB Lexar Professional SILVER PLUS microSDXC UHS-I Card is said to be capable of up to 255MB/s read speed, while write speeds should hit 180MB/s.

This performance might sound a little pedestrian when compared to CFexpress cards and some full-size UHS-II SD cards, but it's very respectable for a high-capacity microSD card. Lexar says the 2TB Silver Plus card will be compatible with select models from DJI, GoPro, Nintendo Switch, and Steam Deck. Although it's worth remembering that some devices like phones and dash cams often don't support microSD cards of over 1TB capacity. The 2TB Silver Plus microSD card will be available in 2027. Pricing has yet to be disclosed.

Also announced is an 8TB variant of Lexar's ARMOR 700 Portable SSD. As its name suggests, this portable storage solution is built to survive abuse. It's IP66 dust- and water-resistant, and its rugged construction helps it withstand drops from up to 3 meters. Lexar has also paid close attention to thermal management, so the drive should stay cool even when operating at its maximum 2000MB/s max read/write speed via a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 connection.

Now with an 8TB capacity option, the ARMOR 700 Portable SSD enables users to transport many hours of high resolution video in a tough yet ultra-portable package. The Lexar ARMOR 700 Portable SSD is compatible with Windows, Mac, Android, iPhone 15/16/17 series, gaming consoles, and more. The new 8TB model is available now at Amazon, priced at $999.99.

Credit: NASA via r/ArtemisProgram

I've never changed memory cards in microgravity, but I can't stop laughing at a viral 15-second video clip from Artemis II that shows even something as simple as swapping cards can be a challenge in space.

During a livestream. Astronaut Christina Koch, floating inside NASA's Orion capsule during the Artemis II lunar flyby, ejects a memory card from her Nikon in the background. The camera's memory card eject feature proved to be a little too powerful for microgravity, and it shoots away from her in the weightless cabin. For a brief, slightly comic moment, she has to chase it down before it vanishes somewhere inside the spacecraft.

It made me laugh. Then it made me think. We obsess over cameras and lenses, but storage is what actually holds the image once you've made it. Most of us choose it on price and write speed, then stop thinking about it. The experiences of the astronauts on the Artemis II mission are a prompt to think harder.

What kit were they using?

The crew flew with Nikon D5 bodies as their primary cameras, a choice that reflects NASA's preference for proven, battle-hardened equipment over the latest technology. A Nikon Z9 was also brought along for evaluation and to use for higher-resolution video and stills, but the workhorse was the D5: a body launched in 2016 and still trustworthy when the stakes could not be higher.

The card that was shot out in the clip was almost certainly a CompactFlash model, based on the D5's slot configuration and serial number data visible in the mission's EXIF files. The more significant story, however, involves the Z9 and the CFexpress Type B cards chosen to go with it.

ProGrade Digital entered into a formal Space Act agreement with NASA to supply CFexpress Type B Iridium cards for the Artemis program. These are not special space-only products, though; the 400GB version used on the mission is currently available on Amazon for $459.99. What makes them different is what they went through to get there.

The cards were subjected to extreme temperature cycling, radiation exposure and sustained performance testing over 18 months, in partnership with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and memory chip supplier Phison Electronics. The radiation element was obviously a big concern. Cosmic rays can corrupt individual bits of stored data, and the longer storage media spends beyond Earth's protective magnetosphere, the greater the cumulative risk.

The 400GB Iridium delivers read speeds of up to 3,550MB/s and sustained write speeds of 850MB/s. That sustained write figure is the one that matters most: burst speed is easy to advertise, but sustained performance under continuous load is what separates reliable professional cards from everything else.

Why this matters 

Of course, you don't need to be on a spaceship to care about the reliability of your storage. Cards fail on assignment, in the rain, in the heat, at high altitude, and typically at the worst possible moment. That doesn't mean you should spend $459.99 on a CFexpress card for your nephew's soccer game. But it does sharpen the question of whether the cheapest card is a false economy.

Speed ratings are testable; environmental durability is much harder to verify. Space qualification is an extreme benchmark, but it is at least a real one, and right now it belongs to a card you can order this afternoon.

Most of us will never shoot in zero gravity or worry about cosmic ray interference. But the next time you're reaching for the cheapest card on the shelf, it's worth remembering that the astronauts circling the Moon had to think about the same question you're glossing over. Knowing that, in their case, they couldn't just send for a firmware update and hope for the best.

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At the start of the year ProGrade Digital announced that it would be increasing prices for its memory cards, due to the rapidly rising cost of flash memory. Well, just three months later and ProGrade's Co-Founder has revealed that it's raising prices again, as the cost price of flash memory continues to increase, with little sign of things stabilizing:

"Prices continue to rise, and we don't expect memory prices to go down in 2026," comments Mark E. Lewis, Prograde's Chief Marketing Officer & Co-Founder. "While some industry analysts project this could extend into 2027, we're focused on what we can see clearly: the pricing pressure and allocation constraints will persist through the remainder of this year. We did not make any price increases in April. However, our costs are increasing significantly, and we will have to increase prices in May. We're sharing this now not to drive urgency, but to give you the information you need to plan your own equipment decisions. Whatever timing works for your business, we wanted you to hear it directly from us."

It should be noted that this is an industry-wide issue and certainly not restricted to ProGrade Digital. Every manufacturer of products that use flash memory - memory cards, SSDs, RAM, etc - has hiked prices dramatically in 2026. The cause of these spiralling costs continues to be the unstoppable rise of AI. AI data processing centers devour high-bandwidth memory and fast SSD storage, causing AI companies to buy up huge stocks of solid state memory. This in turn is having a knock-on effect in other sectors that require DRAM and NAND flash memory, such as the memory card industry. Memory card manufacturers like ProGrade Digital then have to fight for the remaining memory stock after the AI tech giants like Google, Meta, Nvidia and Open AI have paid top dollar to fuel their data centers. And when demand is high, prices go up, resulting in the ever-increasing memory card prices we're now being faced with.

At least ProGrade has provided some advance notice of its forthcoming May price increase though. And while nobody wants to pay more for the same product, I for one am grateful that ProGrade is opting to increase prices rather than reduce product quality.

Check out our guide to the best memory cards, and to the best CFexpress cards

Last month I travelled to China as part of a small group of European journalists on an exclusive press trip hosted by Lexar – the storage brand behind some of the most widely used memory cards and SSDs in photography, now owned by Longsys and this year celebrating its 30th anniversary. Over the course of nearly a week, we were given extensive access to the company's operations. But the moment I keep coming back to didn't happen in a factory or a lab. It happened in a press conference room, prompted by a question that had nothing to do with speeds, capacities or market share.

A fellow journalist was thinking about a physical photograph she owned: her great-grandparents' wedding, printed on paper, more than a century old and still entirely legible. She wanted to know whether her own photographs would be accessible to her great-grandchildren. Whether Lexar was thinking about storage technologies built for genuine longevity. The engineers in the room gave her an answer she probably wasn't expecting.

The back story

First, some context. On the second day of the trip, we'd been taken to the Memory Museum; a small but carefully assembled exhibition within the Zhongshan Storage Industrial Park that traces the history of flash memory from its earliest commercial incarnations to the present. It was actually more fun and interesting than you might imagine.

CompactFlash cards the size of small biscuits. USB drives that look like props from a 1950s sci-fi film. The first Lexar products, sitting behind glass like ancient artefacts. It's the kind of display designed to make you feel the pace of progress. But it also prompted a startling thought.

All of those early formats are, for practical purposes, unreadable now. Not because the data degraded, but because the interfaces to access it no longer exist in any mainstream device. The cards themselves might be perfectly intact. But the photographs on them are simply inaccessible without hardware that no one makes any more.

That's one kind of digital preservation problem. The question raised in that press conference pointed to a different and perhaps more immediate one.

The technical challenge

The NAND flash used in virtually all consumer memory cards today comes in several varieties, distinguished by how many bits of data are stored in each memory cell. The most common types in current consumer products – TLC (triple-level cell) and QLC (quad-level cell) flash – offer more storage at lower cost than older formats, which is why they dominate the market. But they carry a big limitation that doesn't feature prominently in any product's marketing material: when left unpowered, they can begin to lose data within as little as one year.

The mechanism is worth understanding briefly. Flash memory stores data as electrical charges in tiny cells. Yet those charges are not permanent: they leak away slowly over time, like air from a tyre. While a card is connected to a powered device, its firmware can monitor the charge levels and top them up before they fall below the threshold needed to read the data correctly. When a card is in use, this happens automatically. When a card is sitting in a drawer, it doesn't happen at all.

SLC (single-level cell) flash, which stores one bit per cell and is far more robust, extends that window to around a decade under good conditions. But virtually no consumer product uses SLC flash throughout, because the cost and capacity trade-offs make it commercially unworkable.

I sat in that press conference room and absorbed the implication of what was being said. The cards in your camera bag, the drives on your desk, the microSD sitting in your drone's slot right now? All of them are on a clock that you may never have thought to look at.

Risk to the archive

The engineers were careful to contextualise this, though. In normal use (cards regularly connected to cameras, computers, and phones) the firmware does its job and the risk is low. The problem is specifically with archival storage: cards or drives that are left unpowered for extended periods because their contents are considered finished and safe. That is precisely the use case that most photographers would describe as "backing up"... and it's the one where flash memory is most vulnerable.

Lexar said, though, it was developing a direct response to this: a physical device designed to periodically refresh the data on stored cards and drives, re-writing it before the charge levels can degrade to the point of data loss. You would connect your archived media to this device every few months, or perhaps set it to run automatically, and it would cycle through everything stored on it, effectively resetting the retention clock.

No release date or pricing was given: I get the sense they're a long way off this. But the fact that a company of Lexar's scale is building such a product tells you something about how seriously the engineering teams take the underlying risk.

Key takeaway

Walking through the Memory Museum really helped me get my head around this. Those old cards aren't just inaccessible because the interfaces changed. Some of them, if they were left on a shelf long enough, may simply no longer contain what they used to. The data didn't go anywhere dramatic. It just slowly stopped being there.

The photo of someone's great-grandparents, printed on paper and stored in a shoebox, will almost certainly outlast any flash drive currently on the market. Not because it's higher technology, but because it doesn't need power to remain legible. Analogue media degrades, certainly, but it degrades passively and predictably and slowly. Digital storage requires active maintenance to stay intact, and most of us have been treating it as though it doesn't.

The practical upshot? Treat memory cards as working storage rather than archival storage. Copy your files to at least two separate locations, and make sure at least one of those locations is connected to power and actively maintained. If you do keep data on flash media long-term, plug those cards or drives into a computer periodically, even just for a few hours, to give the firmware a chance to do its job.

If Lexar's data refresh device makes it to market, it would make this process significantly more straightforward. Until then, the responsibility falls on the photographer. In short, your great-grandchildren's ability to see your work may depend less on the quality of your camera than on whether you remembered to plug in your hard drive.

Have you noticed that the price of microSD cards and CFexpress cards hasn't been falling at the rate you might expect, or that the same budget that bought you 256GB a year ago now stretches only to 128GB? Well, there's a reason for it. And it's not manufacturing problems, or shipping disruptions, or any of the usual suspects. It's artificial intelligence.

I got a fresh insight into this recently, as part of a small group of European journalists on an exclusive trip to explore Lexar's Chinese operations first-hand (factories, labs, the lot), in the week the company marked its 30th anniversary. 

The access was genuine and the hospitality generous. But the most useful conversation of the whole trip wasn't in any of the polished presentation rooms. It came during a press conference, when I asked Lexar's representatives about memory card pricing, and why it isn't going the way anyone buying camera storage would like.

Back story

First, some background. Since around the middle of last year, the major NAND flash manufacturers have been reallocating production capacity away from consumer storage and toward the kind of high-density, high-endurance memory that AI infrastructure demands. Data centres, AI accelerators and the systems that run large language models eat enormous quantities of flash memory – and they pay more for it. The result is a squeeze on the supply available for cameras, drones, phones, and everything else the rest of us use.

Sitting in that briefing room, listening to Lexar's representatives field questions about European market share and product roadmaps, I pushed on this point directly. The answer I got was not what I expected from a corporate press event. "We have to accept that this situation could be long term," one rep said, "because the industry has been shifted to a new era." 

So let's be clear. Lexar doesn't see this as a temporary inconvenience to be managed through clever supply chain work. It's a structural change: one the company itself has to navigate because that's simply the world we're living in.

The centre of gravity has shifted

The downstream effect on buyers is tangible and already here. Twelve months ago, 256GB was the default sweet spot for microSD: the capacity most consumers bought without thinking too hard about it, whether for a DJI drone, an Insta360 action camera or a compact mirrorless. Lexar's figures suggest that centre of gravity has now shifted to 128GB, pushed down by rising prices that have quietly eroded the value proposition at the higher capacities. There's even renewed interest in 64GB from some distributors, and in bundling scenarios, 32GB; capacities that felt almost nostalgically small just a couple of years ago.

The position Lexar finds itself in is somewhat ironic. The company discontinued its 32GB and 64GB microSD cards some time ago, reasonably anticipating that demand would keep moving upward. Reintroducing those capacities quickly isn't straightforward. "We have thought about changing 256 back to 128," their representative told me. "We're ready for that. But 32 is a difficulty for us due to resource shortages."

Crucially, though, the response to the squeeze – which became clear across multiple conversations during the trip – is not to expand production and flood the market with lower-cost cards. It's to focus on where constrained supply can be put to best use: products that offer the strongest value proposition rather than simply the highest or lowest price point.

This has produced some genuinely interesting results. The world's first 2TB microSD Express card is one. A new range of AI-optimised storage products, which I saw demonstrated at the Zhongshan Innovation R&D lab, is another. But this does mean that affordable high-capacity cards are not the priority they once were. And I have to be honest, I get it.

Walking the production floors at Zhongshan and later visiting the packaging and testing facility at Longforce's Suzhou site (a joint venture between Longsys and Taiwanese semiconductor company PTI), the sheer complexity of modern flash memory production becomes viscerally apparent. These are not factories that can simply turn a dial to produce more of one thing and less of another. The retooling required to shift production priorities takes months, not days.

For photographers, the practical implication is this: the decade-long trend of flash storage getting cheaper every year has stalled, and the reasons are structural rather than cyclical. If you're planning to stock up on cards, the current moment is unlikely to look expensive in retrospect. And if you've been waiting for prices to fall before upgrading your storage, the industry's own representatives are quietly telling you not to hold your breath.

Last November, Panasonic issued guidance regarding overheating issues on the Lumix S1II family of cameras. Along with a firmware fix, Panasonic reportedly advised creators to use SD cards rather than CFexpress as a way to manage heat issues. It was an unusual thing for a camera manufacturer to say in a briefing; essentially recommending a slower, older format over the newer, faster one that its own camera was designed to support.

The memory card industry, to my knowledge, didn't respond to this issue directly at the time. But recently, I had the opportunity to ask Lexar directly.

I was part of a small group of journalists invited to China to view the company's Zhongshan Storage Industrial Park and its Suzhou innovation facilities. The access was extensive: production lines, quality testing labs, engineering briefings. There was also a press conference at which Lexar's senior representatives fielded questions from the group. I put the overheating question to them there, and the response was more forthcoming than I'd anticipated.

The back story

First, some context. One of the stops on our itinerary in Zhongshan, Guangdong province, was the Lexar Quality Lab: a long room lined with testing rigs, filled with the quiet hum of 1,200 devices simultaneously running storage media through its paces across every use case the engineering team could think of. Sony cameras, Nintendo Switch consoles, DJI drones, medical devices, dash cameras – if it takes a card, it was probably somewhere in that room.

The lab's purpose is to understand exactly how Lexar's products behave in the real world, across the full range of conditions users actually encounter. And thermal performance, it turns out, is something they think about rather a lot.

Their representatives confirmed that yes, SD cards have lower bandwidth and power consumption, while CFexpress cards generate more heat during operation. But that's not a design flaw: it's physics.

Higher data transfer speeds require more power, and more power generates more heat. The metal casings that characterise most CFexpress cards are not primarily an aesthetic choice; they're thermal management. Housing the card's components in aluminium rather than plastic gives the heat somewhere to go, allowing the card to sustain high transfer rates over longer periods without throttling or failing.

Whether that's sufficient when a camera body is itself running hot (a sensor, a processor, and a card slot all generating heat in close proximity) is evidently a more complicated question. Lexar stopped short of commenting on Panasonic's specific guidance, but the underlying physics they described validates the concern. If a camera body is already struggling thermally, adding a card that runs warmer than the alternative is not going to help.

Working on a solution

What struck me most, standing later in the testing lab watching cards cycle through endurance runs, was how actively this problem is being worked on. Lexar described a multi-pronged approach: developing controllers with lower power consumption, updating firmware to reduce unnecessary write activity, refining thermal management strategies, and redesigning the heat dissipation structure and materials of the cards themselves.

None of this was presented as imminent or finished: these are ongoing engineering problems rather than solved ones. But the frankness with which they were described was notable. Heat generation is "a common challenge across the industry," one rep said, in a way that suggested it's a daily conversation rather than an uncomfortable admission dragged out for journalists.

It's worth understanding why this matters beyond the specific case of one Panasonic camera. The trajectory of camera development is consistently toward higher resolutions, faster burst rates and more demanding video specifications. The Sony A1 II, the Canon R5 II, the Nikon Z6 III – all cameras I saw lined up in the testing lab, which have been put through their paces alongside Lexar's top-tier cards – are pushing data throughput to levels that would have seemed extraordinary five years ago. Each step up in specification increases the demand on the card, and therefore the heat generated during use.

The Panasonic situation may be the most publicly visible example of that tension so far, but it's unlikely to be the last. As cameras push toward 8K, higher frame rates and more complex computational tasks, the thermal envelope of current card formats will be tested more frequently. The engineers working on CFexpress cards know this. The question is whether the solutions (better materials, lower-power controllers, smarter firmware) can keep pace with what camera manufacturers are asking of them.

For the working photographer, particularly anyone using a high-end hybrid camera for extended video work, none of this changes the immediate calculus right now. A CFexpress card remains significantly faster than an SD card, and for cameras that support it, it remains the right choice for demanding applications.

But in the long term, it's worth knowing that its metal housing is doing real thermal work – and that the industry is aware the work is getting harder.

Sony has suspended deliveries of its entire mainstream memory card range to Japanese retailers and customers, citing a global shortage of semiconductors and other supply-chain pressures.

If you were after a memory card recently, you know that prices are skyrocketing, especially for popular models from SanDisk. The move comes as memory card costs surged worldwide, fueled in part by AI's massive appetite for high-speed storage.

In recent months, memory card prices have tripled, making even standard models increasingly expensive. With AI data centers consuming vast volumes of DRAM and NAND flash memory, manufacturers like Sony are left scrambling for the remaining stock.

Sony Japan's statement

Sony Japan states, "Due to the global shortage of semiconductors (memory) and other factors, it is anticipated that supply will not be able to meet demand for CFexpress memory cards and SD memory cards for the foreseeable future.

"Therefore, we have decided to temporarily suspend the acceptance of orders from our authorized dealers and from customers at the Sony Store from March 27, 2026 onwards.

"Regarding the resumption of order acceptance, we will consider it while monitoring the supply situation and will announce it separately on the product information page."

Why are memory cards in crisis?

AI is 'reshaping' many areas of photography – and memory cards are now feeling the impact.

AI technology is fueling the shortage. Data processing centers for companies like Google purchase vast quantities of high-bandwidth memory and SSDs.

This surge in demand directly impacts other sectors – including photography – where DRAM and NAND flash memory are essential for SD cards and CFexpress cards. The demand is high, and the stock goes up in price.

While Sony's suspension currently affects only Japan, it signals potential trouble for global supply.

Sony's move could foreshadow similar restrictions in other markets, and other memory card manufacturers may soon face the same pressures...

Suspended memory cards

This suspension is for all mainstream Sony memory cards – spanning all tiers – but is currently only for Japan.

CFexpress Type A cards
• 240GB
• 480GB
• 960GB
• 1920GB

CFexpress Type B cards
• 240GB
• 480GB

High-end SD cards (THOUGH series)
• 64GB
• 128GB
• 256GB

Standard SD cards (V60 rated)
• 128GB
• 256GB
• 512GB

Entry-level SD cards (V30 rated)
• 64GB
• 128 GB

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Browse the best CFexpress cards, the best microSD memory cards, and the best memory cards for your camera.

Also check these killer USA savings on Lexar memory cards for all photography levels, starting at $28.

No matter whether you’re a hobbyist just getting started or a professional at the top of their game, every digital photographer needs a reliable memory card for shoots.

Lexar stands out as a top brand for SD cards, and right now at B&H Photo there are crazy deals on Lexar storage with up to hundreds of dollars in savings to be had.

Thanks to storage-hungry AI, prices have shot up on memory cards in recent months, so I’ve done the hard work for you by going through them and summarizing everything here. So, all you have to do is pick which memory card best suits your needs.

Lexar SDXC memory card deals

SDXC (secure digital extended capacity) memory cards typically feature lower storage capacity in the range of 64-512GB and slower data processing times, usually up to 300MB/s, and are better suited to hobbyists than professionals.

Lexar MicroSD cards

A number of smaller cameras, from action cameras to drones to even the Ricoh GR IV use the smaller microSD card format. Like with a standard SD card, high-resolution photos and videos will want a faster UHS-II card, but budget cameras can often get away with a more affordable UHS-I card.

• Need some other camera gear? Discover the best camera deals across the Amazon Big Spring Sale

Lexar CFexpress memory card deals

CFexpress cards are ultra-high-speed, professional-grade memory cards for handling huge data files, such as 4K/8K video and fast burst-mode photography. They outperform SDXC memory cards in pretty much all aspects. They come in two types, so make sure to match the Type A or Type B to your camera's card slot.

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If you still need more help deciding which memory card to snag, then read our guide to the best memory cards for your camera.

Memory cards might not be the most exciting thing to buy for your camera bag, but they are essential. Without one, even the best camera in the world is nothing more than an expensive paperweight.

That’s why I’ve developed a simple rule over the years: I only buy memory cards during the big sales events - such as the Amazon Spring Deal Days sale currently running.

For me, these sales have become a yearly restocking moment; I simply wait until the big online events arrive and stock up when the prices are good. It’s one of the easiest ways photographers can save money without compromising on the gear they rely on every day - and while memory might have seen a price hike thanks to AI, I still believe the ones selected below offer the best value for money - even though they were cheaper last year.

• The Sandisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I is currently £21.39

My go-to cards are usually reliable everyday options like the SanDisk Ultra range or Lexar. They’re dependable, widely compatible, and more than fast enough for the kind of photography most of us shoot day to day. While they may not be the most extreme cards on the market, they strike the perfect balance between price, performance, and reliability.

A lot of people assume that 64GB isn’t much storage these days, especially with modern cameras shooting high-resolution stills and video. But for everyday photography, it’s actually a very practical size. It’s large enough for most shooting sessions, but small enough that you’re not risking huge numbers of images on a single card if something goes wrong.

The real secret is simply carrying spares. I never head out on a shoot with just one memory card in my bag. Cards fill up, they get misplaced, or occasionally they fail. Having two or three backups ready to go means you never have to delete files in a rush or miss a shot because your card suddenly ran out of space.

Think of it the same way people buy batteries in bulk – a small investment that keeps your gear running smoothly for months, if not years.

If you want higher capacities than 64GB, don’t worry – all the current offers or best value for larger cards are listed below.

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Don't forget – the best memory cards need the best memory card readers to get the best out of them!

You might have heard about solid state memory becoming a prized commodity, and its makers cashing in on the dramatically increased demand for flash memory. SanDisk in particular has been making headlines for its soaring stock price. But what's good news for shareholders doesn't leave the average photographer much cause for celebration. That increased demand for memory is pushing prices of memory cards and SSDs sky high, and the price jump is now clear to see.

We've selected some of the best-selling SD and microSD cards at Amazon.com, and tracked their prices over the last few months: the increase is staggering. For instance, the mid-range SanDisk Extreme 128GB microSDXC card was consistently selling for around $17 in October last year, but since November its price has risen considerably, and now you'll need to part with almost $40 to get your hands on one. It's a similar story with Samsung's EVO Select 512GB microSD card - around $35 late last year, but now it's closing in on $70. Fancy a full-size SanDisk Extreme Pro 128GB SD card? $30 at the start of this year; now around $50.

And it's not just Amazon that's been ramping up its memory prices. It's the same story across the retail sector: Independent photography store Gene's Camera in South Bend, Indiana is also reporting huge price increases:

"You know a card that was $2.99 is now $4.99, and that's a big chunk to swallow. You know, $9.95 to $19.95 is like okay, it's 20 bucks, yeah, but $300 to $500 is ouch," said Jon Gilchrist, co-owner of Gene's Camera.

So why is it so much more expensive to get hold of what seems like such a basic, commonplace piece of tech like an SD card? Well, it's all thanks to unstoppable rise of AI. AI data processing centers devour high-bandwidth memory and fast SSD storage, causing AI companies to buy up huge stocks of solid state memory. This in turn is having a knock-on effect in other sectors that require DRAM and NAND flash memory, such as the memory card industry. Manufacturers of memory cards and SSDs have to fight for the remaining memory stock after the AI tech giants like Google, Meta, Nvidia and Open AI have paid top dollar to fuel their data centers. And when the demand is high, prices go up, resulting in the hugely inflated memory card prices we're now seeing around the world.

Check out our guide to the best memory cards, and to the best CFexpress cards

If you haven’t shopped for memory cards or hard drives recently, be prepared for a serious case of sticker shock. My heart sank when I started browsing for new SD cards and found some prices that were double the typical cost.

Experts have been warning for some time that the storage needs of AI data centers would create a sharp increase in demand that would result in significant price increases. Unfortunately, those experts weren’t wrong.

I’m now seeing a number of memory cards that are double their typical cost. External hard drives for photographers and videographers storing their backlog of images have jumped significantly, too.

As a photographer with several terabytes worth of archives stored on external hard drives, the rise of storage costs is terrifying. Cameras are just pretty decorations with no memory card inside. Memory cards can only be written to a finite number of times – while high-end cards use functions like wear leveling to extend the lifespan, memory cards do occasionally need to be replaced.

Equally, the thought of deleting my backlog of images is painful just to think about, but eventually, I’m going to need to either add another hard drive to my collection or painstakingly go through my photos and delete the rejects to free up space.

The price of memory cards and hard drives right now is terrifying. But that doesn’t mean discounts and sales are unheard of. I’ve found a few deals that don’t give me heart palpitations on memory cards and SSDs from brands that I know and trust. And, I've even found some deals on protective cases to extrend to longevity of the memory cards I already have, which are now worth far more than when I bought them.

Some of these deals expire soon, while others rely on in-cart coupons. But, as of this writing, these are the best deals that I've spotted on memory cards and external hard drives.

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Take a look at the best memory cards, the best external hard drives, or the best portable hard drives for photographers.

I just looked at the price of memory cards on Amazon and well, that was a very fast way to ruin my day. Experts have previously forewarned that the rise of generative AI would increase demand for storage – and based on the prices of everything from external SSDs to memory cards, photographers are already beginning to see the effects.

When browsing through memory cards gave me a serious case of sticker shock, I turned to an Amazon price tracker to see just how much the price of several favorite memory card brands has changed over the past few months. A 256GB UHS-II SD card from SanDisk costs about $100 more right now than it did a year ago. Lexar’s 256GB UHS-I Silver is about twice its average cost right now.

Even a budget 256GB UHS-I from SanDisk costs twice as much as the average right now. Smaller cards aren’t immune either – like Lexar’s 256GB UHS-II microSD card from the gold series that averages around $59, but is currently $135.

The unusually high prices aren’t just in the US – which may also be impacted by tariff changes as well as AI. A SanDisk 128GB Extreme Pro UHS-II card that averages about £52 at Amazon UK is at its highest ever price of £119.19 right now.

The price change doesn’t seem to be even across every brand or format. This Lexar CFexpress card is only a little higher than its $160 average, though that’s more than twice its Black Friday price.

Memory cards aren't the only storage format affected, either – the price of external hard drives has also risen, and the DRAM crisis is also expected to affect the price of devices like laptops and smartphones. The high demand for DRAM could potentially also impact cameras themselves – Canon recently told investors that two-thirds of the estimated ¥6 to 7 billion predicted DRAM cost increase for 2026 is for the imaging division.

Perhaps the most frustrating thing about the increasing cost of memory cards right now is that the culprit is something that many photographers are already frustrated with: artificial intelligence. Adding the rising cost of SD cards to take real pictures with real cameras is like delivering a knock-out punch to someone who is already writhing on the ground. Creators are already fighting to keep their images out of training data, worrying about the rising cost of software, and stressing about keeping the work coming in in the age of AI.

There’s never a good time for prices to increase, but the rising cost of memory cards and external hard drives comes at a time when both megapixel counts and burst speeds are increasing. Cameras with 100MP are no longer hard to find, and the burst speed for still photos is now rivaling that of video frame rates. (Videographers, are you okay right now?!?)

That means cameras are filling memory cards both with larger files and more images at a time when those cards are becoming rapidly more expensive – all thanks to a technology that wants to compete with photography using copyrighted images scraped from the internet.

Whenever a creator is looking at a gear purchase, factoring the cost of accessories should be part of that decision – and that’s especially true with memory cards right now.

If memory card prices continue in the same direction, the memory crisis may, like film photography, serve as a reminder for quality over quantity – because leaving your camera on burst mode and storing a backlog of extra images is rapidly becoming quite expensive.

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Browse the best memory cards or the best CFexpress cards.

The Lexar Silver Plus is positioned as a fast, versatile UHS-I microSDXC card, capable of handling most demands. It costs less than most premium UHS-II microSD cards, yet with read speeds of up to 205MB/s and a maximum write speed of 150MB/s, it will handle 4K video recording or high-res RAW burst shooting with ease. An A2 app loading speed rating makes this card ideal for use in an Android phone, and you can choose from capacities ranging from 64GB right up to 1TB.

Read more: the best microSD cards

Performance

As is often the case, we were sent the smallest capacity version of the Silver Plus card to test. This 64GB model has a slightly slower write speed rating than other capacities in the Silver Plus range (100MB/s, vs 150MB/s for the 128GB-1TB cards), but it is very common for the lowest capacity card in any manufacturer's memory card range to have a slower speed rating. To see whether the performance hit with the 64GB card is as large as Lexar claims, I used the CrystalDiskMark storage benchmarking app which should extract the maximum possible speed from any memory card. I then plugged the microSD card into a fast USB4 Windows laptop via a ProGrade Digital PGM0.5 SD card reader. This USB 3.2 reader has a maximum bus speed of 625MB/s, so there's no chance of it or the test laptop bottlenecking the Lexar Silver Plus during testing.

And the speeds I recorded turned out to be pretty good. 168.39MB/s read speed is a bit short of Lexar's 205MB/s claim, but it's far from sluggish. Write speed matters more when the card is used in a camera, and here a 143.64MB/s maximum is very rapid. In fact, it's much closer to the 150MB/s rated speed of the 128GB-1TB Silver Plus cards than the 100MB/s advertised write speed of our 64GB test card, so there doesn't actually seem to be a penalty for choosing the lowest capacity.

All well and good, but what sort of transfer speeds can you expect in real world use? To assess this, I timed how long it too to read one large video file and a folder full of images from the card, and how long it took to write them back to the card (one big file will always transfer faster than a folder of small files totalling the same size).

In this test the Silver Plus clocked an impressive 131MB/s average write speed when transferring a video file, and this speed didn't drop much when writing multiple small images. Read speed was also very consistent regardless of file type, though as with the CrystalDiskMark test, it's a pity read speeds weren't closer to the advertised 205MB/s.

Verdict

I was impressed by the Lexar Silver Plus microSDXC card. While there are faster microSD cards out there, a real-world write speed of almost 150MB/s means there really aren't many situations where you'd actually need a faster, pricier card. It's a pity I couldn't get closed to the claimed 205MB/s read speed, but write speed is more important when the card is in a camera, and I've got no complaints there. Factor the excellent range of capacities and quick A2 app loading speed and you've got a microSD card that will excel in pretty much any compatible device. Currently the 256GB capacity is the one to go for, as it offers the lowest price per gigabyte of storage, although the 512GB and 1TB cards are almost as good value.

SanDisk offers dozens of different microSD cards, from cheap and cheerful basic options to premium UHS-II cards boasting super-fast data transfer speeds. The Extreme A2 sits roughly in the middle of the SanDisk microSD range. It's capable of 190MB/s maximum read speed and up to 130MB/s write speed - not record-breaking speed, but quick enough for the vast majority of microSD use cases. What's more, it also has an A2 rating, meaning it's able to load apps faster if you want to use the card in an Android phone (most microSD cards are only have the slower A1 rating).

Capacities for this A2 card include 64GB, 128GB and 256GB. It's a pity higher-capacity options aren't available, and be aware that the 64GB card has slower read/write speeds than the larger capacities (170MB/s read, 80MB/s write).

Read more: the best microSD cards

Performance

To verify SanDisk's speed claims, I broke out my storage benchmark testing software of choice: CrystalDiskMark. This can be configured to replicate a best-case read and write speed scenario, which should reveal the maximum possible speed a memory card, SSD or hard drive is capable of.

A 167MB/s max read speed is pretty much up there with SanDisk's 170MB/s claim for the 64GB capacity card. 67.5MB/s is a little short of the advertised 80MB/s, but isn't too far off.

But benchmarking software isn't real-world usage, so I also ran a more representative tests transferring files to and from the drive. I used a folder of images totalling 25.7GB, as well as one large 36.2GB file, to test how fast the microSD card is when transferring multiple small files and a single large file (the latter will always result in faster read/write speeds).

In this real-world transfer speed test, the Extreme A2 was able to sustain 149MB/s when transferring a single large file from the card, with speeds peaking at 159MB/s - not far off the maximum read speed achieved in CrystalDiskMark. Write speeds were also almost the same as those recorded by the benchmarking software. As is always the case for any memory card, working with multiple image files of the same total data size results in slightly slower transfer speeds, but the speed hit isn't too noticeable.

Verdict

The SanDisk Extreme A2 microSDXC card strikes just the right balance of good-enough performance at a reasonable price. Unless you need to record high bit rate uncompressed 4K video, there shouldn't be many scenarios that this card couldn't handle. Whether you need a microSD card for your camera, action cam, dash cam or phone, this versatile offering is ideal and won't break the bank. Although we tested the 64GB card, I'd recommend going for the 256GB version. It's faster, costs less per gigabyte of storage than the lower capacities while still being affordable, and you'll soon use the extra capacity.

Want a cheap microSD card, but don't fancy ordering by price=lowest and choosing the cheapest no-name brand? The Samsung Evo Select could be the answer. It's very well priced, yet has the reassurance of being from a respected brand. Heck, it's even capable of 160MB/s read speed, which is barely slower than some premium UHS-I microSD cards.

Capacities vary from 64GB up to a generous 1TB, and all are V30-certified, so they can sustain 30MB/s when recording video. That should be enough oomph for capturing compressed 4K video.

You even get an A2 app loading speed rating, which is quicker than the A1 rating you'll find on most budget cards. This signifies that the Evo Select will provide snappy performance if used in an Android phone.

Surely there has to be a catch somewhere? Let's find out...

Read more: the best microSD cards

Performance

Keen memory card enthusiasts (we're a fun bunch, honest) may have noticed that Samsung doesn't quote a maximum write speed for the Evo Select - it only advertises that aformentioned 160MB/s read speed. If you dig into the product specs, it simply says that write speed is "Lower than Read Speed". Not very encouraging. To see just how low, I plugged our 256GB Evo Select test card into a fast USB4 Windows laptop, via a ProGrade Digital PGM0.5 USB 3.2 SD card reader. This hardware set-up has a maximum bus speed of 625MB/s, so there's no chance of anything bottlenecking the Evo Select during testing. I then fired up my trusty storage benchmarking software, CrystalDiskMark.

(Note: we're testing a slightly older version of the Evo Select which is rated at 130MB/s. You can still buy this card, but the newer 160MB/s version is now the more widely-available option)

At 131MB/s, read speed is right in line with Samsung's claims for our test card. But then we see why Samsung isn't too keen on advertising the write speed of the Evo Select. 34MB/s is pretty slow compared to most of the microSD cards we test, and it only just qualifies the card for its V30 video write speed certification. Even so, I've personally been using this exact microSD card in my 2.7K dash cam for over a year and have had no recording issues, proving that even with a relatively mediocre write speed, it's still possible for a cheap microSD card to work fine in an average use case like this.

Although this probably isn't a card you'll be using for frequent data transfer to and from a computer, where outright read and write speed matters in the quest for reduced wait times, we always test these real-world transfer speeds anyway.

Sure enough, read speeds are healthy enough, matching those achieved in benchmarking software, as well as Samsung's 130MB/s claim for this generation of Evo Select.

While there's no miraculous boost in write speed past the 34MB/s recorded in CrystalDiskMark, thankfully neither is there a significant drop in write speed, even when writing multiple small image files - traditionally the slowest scenario for write speed - so at least you can expect the card to work at its best, regardless of workload.

Would the newer, 160MB/s read speed Evo Select also have a faster write speed? Maybe, but Samsung still doesn't advertise a write speed figure for this card, so it probably isn't going to be much better.

Verdict

The Samsung Evo Select isn't going to win any transfer speed races or break any records, but if you just want a well-priced, reliable microSD card for your phone, security camera or dash cam, it's a solid option. Sure, it could be argued that you only need to spend a little more to get a microSD card with a higher write speed, but when the majority of use cases simple don't require a card faster than the Evo Select, why pay more? You'd be better served by spending the equivalent amount on a higher capacity Evo Select.

Here's some memory card news you don't see every day: ProGrade Digital has announced that it has entered into a Space Act agreement with NASA to support Artemis moon missions.

The Space Agency will be using ProGrade's CFexpress Type B Iridium cards, in 400GB and 1.6TB capacities, along with ProGrade Digital high-speed memory card readers. Several brands were considered for the contract, but ProGrade cards were chosen due to their ability to "sustain high performance and reliable operation in a high radiation space environment". Iridium cards are said to have "exceeded the capability of other CFexpress Type B cards when tested in a space-like environment".

“The lunar surface presents very challenging environments for cameras and related storage media,” said Jeremy Myers, HULC Handheld Universal Lunar Camera COTS (commercial off the shelf) hardware lead. “The partnership developed between NASA and ProGrade will help ensure images and video are captured reliably when humanity returns to the Moon”.

From initial sample submission to being chosen for the contract took over 18 months. During this time the memory cards were subjected to many hours of extreme conditions to represent those in space. NASA's camera of choice for the Artemis campaign is a specially-designed Nikon Z9.

Artemis missions will see humans again returning to the moon, in order to establish long-term scientific lunar research, with the intention to use this knowledge to help facilitate travel to Mars.

2026 marks the 30th anniversary of the Lexar brand. From its beginnings in defining the speed standard for the first CompactFlash cards, to its latest innovations like the stunning metal-cased Armor SD card, Lexar has continually been at the forefront of the flash memory market. At this year's CES consumer electronics trade show in Las Vegas it's showcasing its latest and greatest products.

These include the world's first 2 terabyte microSD card, capable of up to 255MB/s read and 180MB/s write speeds, the Lexar Silver Plus 2TB microSDXC.

Another intriguing new storage solution is the TouchLock Portable SSD; a NFC dual-encryption portable SSD that features NFC authentication and 128-bit AES hardware encryption. Using a smartphone as the key, users can tap to unlock secure storage zones, all in a slim, magnetic drive that offers automatic photo backup.

If you'd prefer an ultra-light and compact portable SSD, there's the Lexar Air Portable SSD that weighs just 0.6 oz and features automatic backup via the Lexar App.

For its latest development, Lexar is introducing AI Storage Core: a range of storage products designed to be compatible with the latest generation of PCs that feature built-in expansion interfaces. These products include the AI-Grade SSD; a PCIe M.2 NVME internal SSD designed specifically for AI PCs and high-performance compute workloads.

There's also the AI-Grade Storage Stick; an expansion card that "will allow users to expand storage instantly by simply plugging in a device to increase capacity". Lastly, there's the AI-Grade Card, which Lexar states is "for 8K AI imaging, sensor fusion and real-time edge analytics". We look forward to receiving more details about these AI-compatible products, including pricing and availability information.

As the old adage goes, you should keep your friends close and your SD cards closer, or something like that… Well, with the SD Card Necklace that Not.online is peddling, you can do just that. This is the online outlet’s first official product, with a USB necklace also available. According to the product description, this piece of memory card bling has been designed for anyone who carries their creativity everywhere, from photographers to filmmakers, DJs, and more.

Imagery is thin on the ground, but I can only assume that the item of jewelry either opens up like a locket or you simply slot the SD card inside. And while this might seem extremely far removed from traditional jewelry, it kind of reminds me of a modern-day locket. People often placed photos or tiny paintings of loved ones inside lockets – I suppose you could fill your SD card with digital imagery of loved ones, too.

The chain is stainless steel, but quite what the locket is made out of is anyone’s guess. According to the website’s description, it has a matte-black finish, but the imagery clearly shows gold and silver finishes. And at £50 (around $63 / AU$95), I’d want to know exactly what I’m buying.

I do think the idea is pretty neat, though. However, a quick web search does reveal that other outlets are offering similar necklace designs. Still, if you’re prone to forgetting to pack an SD card or don’t like keeping your spare in a coat pocket, there’s no safer place to put a precious item than around your neck. Just ask Frodo Baggins.

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Keeping your SD cards safe is a top priority. Here's why I NEVER remove a memory card from a camera. But sometimes, accidents do happen: My dog ate my memory card... but the images survived! For more photography-related stories, here's the latest camera news.

I test lots of memory cards, and to be honest, they're not exactly exciting. But there is one card I've reviewed that's truly exceptional: Lexar's Armor SDXC card

Where many SD cards promise some level of durability, the Armor card is on an entirely different level. Thanks to its stainless steel construction, it claims to be 37x stronger than a regular plastic-bodied card, while also being IP68 dust- and water-resistant, plus magnet-, static-, X-Ray-, UV- and temperature-resistant. Oh, and it'll even survive a drop from up to 16.5 feet!

This kind of bragging is common in tech marketing, but I've personally put Lexar's toughness claims to the test and can report that this is not hyperbole: the Armor SD card really is shockingly strong. It absolutely will not bend. It's as waterproof as you could ever reasonably need it to be. Drops onto concrete will hardly mark it. Heck, I actually had to drive my car over the card to kill it, and even then the exterior still looked almost pristine.

My full (destructive!) review of the Lexar Armor Gold SDXC memory card

I reviewed the Lexar Armor Gold SD card, whereas this Amazon Cyber Monday deal is for the Armor Silver version. In terms of toughness, Gold and Silver are identical. Even the maximum write speed is the same, at 280MB/s. The only difference between the Silver card and the Gold card I tested is write speed, with Silver being capable of up to 160MB/s write speed, while Gold can manage up to 205MB/s.

But where a 256GB Armor Gold card will currently set you back around $120, the Silver version can now be had for just $84.49 with a 23% Cyber Monday discount.

Sure, most people will probably never subject an SD card to the kind of abuse that a Lexar Armor card can withstand. But when I'm capturing fleeting moments that may never be repeated, I love the reassurance that these precious shots are being stored on a memory card that's practically unbreakable.

If you are buying a camera, drone, security camera, dashcam, or other imaging device then there is one thing you just shouldn't forget about. Almost certainly, your new camera won't come supplied with a memory card – and you won't be able to use it without it.

Fortunately, Cyber Monday is a good day to stock up on cards – but do make sure you buy one that is the right format for your camera. Lots of cameras use SDXC cards - and smaller, lighter devices like drones and action cameras use microSD. Enthusiast mirrorless modes use CFexpress - Type A on Sony, and Type B on Canon, Nikon, and other brands. But do check!

Here are the very best Cyber Monday deals on memory cards available right now on each of these four key formats...

Cyber Monday memory card deals

Read more:

The best memory cards
The best microSD cards
The best camera phone
The best drones
The best action cameras

CFexpress Type A cards are still a relative rarity in the memory card world. Since they were first utilized by the Sony a7S III in 2020, the format has been used in several full-frame Sony bodies, but other camera manufacturers have stuck with the physically larger, and (generally) faster Type B variant.

We say "generally", as not all Type A cards are inferior to their Type B siblings, and this Lexar card is a good case in point. It uses the next-gen CFexpress 4.0 standard, which makes it twice as fast as the first generation of Type A cards (confusingly called CFexpress 2.0). This makes CFexpress 4.0 Type A cards just as fast as version 2.0 Type B cards (CFexpress 4.0 Type B cards are twice as fast again, but precious few people actually need that much speed).

The Lexar Professional GOLD CFexpress 4.0 Type A card is available in five capacity options, from 256GB up to the 2 terabyte capacity we're testing here. All capacities boast read speeds of up to 1800MB/s and an impressive 1650MB/s max write speed. The larger capacity cards are also capable of a 1400MB/s sustained write rate, and though the 256GB and 512GB versions can 'only' manage a 1000MB/s sustained write speed, that's still more than fast enough to gain VPG400 certification. This means the card is guaranteed to sustain a minimum 400MB/s during video recording - ideal for capturing 6K or 8K footage.

Specifications

• Max read speed: 1800MB/s
• Max write speed: 1650MB/s
• Available capacities: 256GB, 512GB, 640GB, 1TB, 2TB

Build and handling

The Lexar Professional GOLD CFexpress 4.0 Type A card is exactly like any other Type A card, at least on the surface. That is to say, it's remarkably small. If you took a Type B card and split it in half widthways, each half would be around the size of a Type A card, only the actual Type A card would be thinner. A Type A card is also smaller in terms of length and width than an SD card, and only around 50% thicker. Considering this Lexar Type A card is around 6x faster than even the fastest UHS-II SD cards, you get an awful lot of performance crammed into a tiny form factor.

Lexar claims the Professional GOLD CFexpress 4.0 Type A card is IP68-rated against dust and water ingress, while also being drop-proof from heights up to 5 meters. The card is built to be bend-resistant, shock- and vibration-resistant, and it's able to resist pressures of up to 150 newtons. Lexar even states that it's been tested to withstand up to 12,000 insertion and ejection cycles.

Performance

To determine exactly how fast the Lexar Type A card really is, I fired up my memory card benchmarking software of choice: CrystalDiskMark. This is capable of extracting the maximum possible performance from a memory card, but only if the supporting hardware is up to the job. So to ensure no testing bottlenecks, I used a fast Windows 11 laptop with USB4 connectivity. USB4 has a maximum 40Gbps bandwidth, equating to around 5000MB/s - more than enough to max out any Type A card. I also used Lexar's WF370 Workflow CFexpress 4.0 Type A card reader, which is based around a USB4 interface, so it too should enable any Type A card to work at full speed.

And the results are pretty respectable. Though a little way short of Lexar's claimed 1800MB/s read and 1650MB/s write speeds, the difference isn't enough to be concerning, or particularly noticeable.

Storage benchmarks are all well and good, but to determine the real-world performance you're likely to get when using the card to transfer images or video to a computer for editing, I took a single large video file, as well as a folder full of small images, and moved them to and from the card to see what sort of read and write speeds you can expect during typical use:

These real-world results are a bit disappointing when you consider that the card was nearing 1700MB/s read and 1550MB/s write speeds in benchmarking software. Even so, this level of performance is still comfortably quicker than a CFexpress 2.0 Type A card, and way faster than any UHS-II SD card.

Verdict

If you're lucky enough to own a camera such as a Sony a1 II, a9 III or a7R V, you're going to want the fastest, most reliable memory card to use with it. The Lexar Professional GOLD CFexpress 4.0 Type A card fits the bill almost perfectly. It's easily fast enough for 8K Raw video recording, and it won't even break a sweat keeping up with the a9 III's 120fps burst shooting mode.

When it comes to transferring footage for editing, then that too will be blisteringly fast, assuming you've got a computer and card reader that are up to the job. It's a bit disappointing that we couldn't get closer to Lexar's speed claims when moving files between card and computer, though it's possible that's an issue confined to our particular test set-up.

But that's our only issue with this otherwise stellar Type A card. It also comes in a good range of capacities, is built to last, and is priced fairly for the performance on offer. If you need a fast, capacious, and reliable Type A card, the Lexar Professional GOLD CFexpress 4.0 Type A card should be high on your shortlist.

Memory cards might not be the most exciting photography purchase, but they’re indispensable - without one, even the best camera is useless. I always stock up on SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I cards, not for their size but for their reliability, great value, and the fact that they’re almost always discounted ahead of Black Friday sales

• see all of today's Amazon Black Friday camera deals

Sure, 64GB might not seem like much in an era of 8K video and high-resolution sensors, but for everyday photography, it’s plenty - and at this price, they’re practically impossible to resist.

It’s become something of a ritual for me now. I ignore memory cards for most of the year and wait until Black Friday - or the days leading up to it - when prices start to tumble, and full-price suddenly looks ridiculous. SanDisk’s 64GB Ultra cards often drop into impulse-buy territory, and if you need more room, the 128GB and 256GB versions usually follow suit at prices that feel like a steal.

The real trick is having spares. I never head out without at least two or three extras in my bag. Cards fill up, fail, or simply vanish, and having backups means you’re never caught short - no deleting files on the fly or missing a shot while swapping cards. And when you’ve picked them up for less than the cost of a pub lunch, there’s no reason not to stock up.

SanDisk Ultra cards have always hit the sweet spot for me. They’re not overkill for everyday or even semi-professional use, yet they’re fast, reliable, and built for real-world shooting, whether that’s documenting family life, covering events, or spending an afternoon out with the camera. I’ve filled more of them than I can count, and not one has ever let me down.

So why pay full whack? Black Friday is basically a once-a-year restock event for me. I buy cards like people buy batteries at Christmas – just enough to get me through another season or two. It’s a small investment in peace of mind, and at Black Friday prices, it's hard to make a case against it.

If you shoot regularly and you’re not taking advantage of these sales, you’re missing a trick. The SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I is always on offer, and if you need more storage, the 128GB and 256GB versions are rarely far behind. Just wait for the price to drop… and buy!

Shop the memory card

With fast transfer speeds, reliable performance and a price that’s hard to ignore, the SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I is a smart addition to any camera bag – ideal for everyday shooting, and right now, it’s cheap enough to pick up without hesitation.

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CFexpress cards keep getting faster... except right now, they're not. Since the introduction of the CFexpress 4.0 standard we've seen Type B cards capable of speeds approaching 3800MB/s, but there's very little headroom to go any faster, as the absolute theoretical speed limit of version 4.0 is 4.0GB/s, or 4000MB/s. So with a bunch of Type B cards all hitting the technological speed buffers, how do you stand out from the crowd?

Nextorage may have the answer with its NX-B2 Pro+ series of Type B cards. Though still in the development stage, they're said to be capable of a blazing-fast maximum read speed of 3700MB/s, and an equally impressive 3600MB/s peak write rate.

But what really sets B2 Pro+ cards apart from the competition is their VPG1600 certification. VPG (Video Performance Guarantee) is a tightly-controlled testing procedure and certification that guarantees a memory card can sustain a minimum write speed when recording video. Plenty of SD and CFexpress cards have VPG200 or VPG400 certification, meaning they're guaranteed to maintain a minimum 200MB/s or 400MB/s write speed, but this is the first time we've heard of a Type B card with the latest VPG1600 rating. It certifies that a B2 Pro+ card will be able to sustain an incredible 1600MB/s minimum write speed while recording video.

Nextorage has some history with pushing VPG speed limits. Back in March it revealed its A2 Pro series of CFexpress Type A cards, which were the first-ever Type A cards to receive VPG800 (800MB/s minimum sustained write speed) certification.

Strangely, whether it be the VPG800 Type-A cards, or this latest VPG1600 B2 Pro+ Type B card, both still sport the older VPG400 icon in addition to their new VPG800/1600 certification. This is because these latest VPG speed standards don't actually replace the older VPG200/400 ratings; they instead supplement them. This is due to the VPG800 and 1600 ratings being part of the new Video Performance Guarantee Profile 5.0, released by the CompactFlash Association in February 2025. VPG-5 is not backward compatible with VPG Profile 4.0 (which covers the existing VPG200 and VPG400 ratings). As such, a VPG800 or 1600 card may not work with a camera recording mode that requires VPG200 or VPG400.

This is because to achieve the higher sustained write speeds of VPG800 and 1600, such a card must first be preconditioned (initialized) with low-level formatting. This preconditioning, which has not previously been necessary, essentially resets the card to its original factory condition, permanently deleting any previous data from the card. This in turn means the card is a perfectly clean 'blank slate' which has a large, contiguous storage space, onto which a continuous video data stream can be written at high speed. There's therefore no risk of recording speed being reduced or interrupted by the memory controller needing to allocate part of the recording to a different sector of NAND flash in order to work around any pre-existing data stored on the card.

This sounds perfectly reasonable but there's a catch: simply deleting a video from the card doesn't recover the corresponding storage space for future VPG800 / 1600 recordings - you're limited to whatever remaining storage space is left after the last preconditioning (low-level formatting). To restore the full capacity of the card for more VPG800/1600 recording, you must again perform a preconditioning. Thankfully this procedure doesn't appear to be necessary for general use, or for VPG400 recordings.

For more information on these latest VPG standards, and why preconditioning is necessary, check out the official guidance from the CompactFlash Association.

We don't yet have any pricing or availability information for NX-B2PRO+ Series cards; only that they could be launched in 660GB and 1330GB capacities.

If you need a super-fast CFexpress Type B card sooner, then consider Nextorage's existing B2 Pro (non '+') card, which is available to buy now and boasts the same 3700MB/s read and 3600MB/s write speeds, just without the VPG1600 certification.

Lexar has managed to cram 2TB of storage into a camera-bound memory card. The Lexar Professional Gold and Silver variants of the CFExpress 4.0 Type A cards, used widely in Sony mirrorless cameras, now come in capacities up to 2TB, the company announced this week.

That puts a ton of digital storage into a card that’s 2.8mm / 0.11 inches thick. When I first read that the cards now come up to 2TB, I thought that sounded more like an external hard drive than a memory card.

That extends to the speed. The Gold CFExpress card has up to 1,800 MB/s read speeds and 1650MB/s write speeds, and sustained write speeds up to 1400MB/s. (The silver is a little slower at 1750MB/s read, 1650MB/s write, and 1300MB/s sustained write.)

That’s not going to beat the fastest SSDs, but the Lexar SL200 Portable SSD from our top picks for the best portable hard drives is rated for 550MB/s read and 400MB/s write speeds.

As a photographer still using a 26MP camera, I’m not exactly the type of creator who needs 2TB in a memory card. Lexar is directing the new cards towards videographers shooting 8K, with both cards supporting Sony Alpha and Sony FX cameras with CFexpress slots. At the highest bitrate, the Sony A1’s 8K files will eat up around 4.5GB per minute – the sort of camera that’s going to need memory cards measured in TB rather than GB.

Like earlier cards in the series, the CFexpress Gold and Silver cards are designed to withstand heat and vibration, with IP68 dust and water-resistant ratings and 150N of pressure durability rating. (I cannot imagine the heartache of losing 2TB on a memory card).

The cost of a memory card tends to climb with the storage, but in this case, the new 2TB cards are more affordable than buying two separate 1TB cards from the same series.

The 2TB gold comes in at about $700, and the Silver at $600 in the US. The cards are available to pre-order in the US at B&H and Amazon.

International pricing has not yet been announced, but that’s around £532 / AU$1069 / CA$981 for the Gold and £456 / AU$916 / CA$840 for the Silver.

The card joins Lexar’s lineup of memory cards, which also includes 2TB in the CFexpress 4.0 Type B format.

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The humble SD card has been with us since 1999, and in that time capacity and speed have grown dramatically. We've also had cards with built-in Wi-Fi, but externally the format has remained pretty-much unchanged: one or two rows of electrical contacts, set into a plastic shell.

But not any more. With its Armor Gold SDXC card, Lexar has swapped the plastic for a stainless steel construction that's claimed to be 37x stronger than a conventional, plastic SD card.

Features

I have to admit that when I first saw the pre-launch press release for the Armor Gold SD card, I was sceptical. Sure, metal is usually stronger than plastic, but it can still bend, especially when it's as thin as an SD card. Could the Armor Gold card really be usefully stronger than a normal, plastic SD card?

Lexar, to its credit, does back up its toughness claims with some statistics. That "37x stronger" figure refers to the card being able to withstand 370 newtons of bending, compared to just 10 newtons that Lexar says a plastic SD card can survive (we'll be testing this claim later). Furthermore, the Armor Gold card is also IP68 dust- and water-resistant, it's built to survive drops from up to 5 meters, and it's said to be magnet-, static-, X-Ray-, UV- and temperature-resistant. That's a lot of resistance.

Then there are the subtle, yet commendable details: the write protect switch has been ditched, presumably to increase the rigidity of the metal body, and to help with water resistance (and let's face it, who actually uses the write-protect switch, anyway?).

I also appreciate that Lexar has deleted the thin plastic 'ribs' that sit between the contact pads on most SD cards, as these are always a vulnerable point of weakness. Finally, where most SD cards have a printed label to provide brand, speed and capacity information, the Armor Gold's graphics are laser-etched, so they're much less likely to wear away.

Despite all this extra toughness, Lexar maintains that an Armor Gold card is no thicker than a plastic SD card, so it should still fit in any compatible host device. What's more, with a metal rather than plastic shell, heat dissipation from the memory chips within should - theoretically - be improved.

The 1TB Armor Gold card we're testing here is rated at a maximum 280MB/s read speed and has a 205MB/s peak write speed. This is made possible by its UHS-II interface, which also helps it achieve a V60 video speed rating, meaning it should be capable of sustaining at least 60MB/s when recording video. While there are faster UHS-II SDXC cards on the market, the Armor Gold's performance specs are still respectable, and chances are if you've got a camera that needs even faster memory, you'd be using a CFexpress card anyway.

Armor Gold cards are available in 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB and 1TB capacities. The top three capacities have the 205MB/s max write speed, but strangely the 64GB and 128GB versions are a touch faster, at 210MB/s (usually smaller capacities tend to have slower speed ratings when it comes to memory cards and SSDs).

Performance

I ran my go-to speed test benchmarking software for memory cards - CrystalDiskMark - to test Lexar's speed claims for the Armor Gold card. I use a modern Windows laptop for my performance tests, as its USB4 connection is more than fast enough to max out the speed of any SDXC card, ensuring no hardware bottlenecks. My card reader of choice is a ProGrade Digital PGM0.5 SDXC/microSDXC UHS-II Dual-Slot Mobile Card Reader. This is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 reader which, like the laptop, is capable of maximum transfer speeds far higher than the Armor Gold card can reach.

But try as I did, I couldn't quite match Lexar's advertised speeds, being 30MB/s short of the claimed peak read speed, and around 15MB/s down on the specified write rate. Even so, my results are far from disappointing, as this is still a fast SD card.

To see how the Armor Gold card performs in real-world file transfers, I took a single large video file, as well as a folder full of small images, and moved both to and from the SD card, to see what sort of read and write speeds you can expect during typical use:

Moving multiple small files will always take a little longer than a single file of the same total size, so reduced transfer speeds are usually inevitable. However, the Armor Gold card achieved speeds impressively close to those recorded by CrystalDiskMark.

Toughness testing

At this point with most SD cards I'd go straight to my verdict. But the Armor Gold card is more about toughness than speed, so it'd be irresponsible not to test its ruggedness.

Firstly, bend resistance. Lexar states that the Armor Gold features "a bending resistance of up to 370 Newtons", and it has produced a seemingly rendered graphic to illustrate this. Consequently, it's not clear how Lexar actually conducted this test, as pressure is relative to the physical area across which it is being applied, and that crucial test detail isn't revealed.

So with insufficient information about Lexar's testing methodology to exactly replicate its bend test myself, I had to invent my own method. I positioned the SD card so it formed a bridge between two raised, stout surfaces, which would allow the center portion of the card to bend into the void when downward pressure was applied. I then partially slotted a strip of metal into a block of wood, so the exposed edge of the metal would contact straight across the width of the SD card.

Now all I needed was plenty of weight to stack on the card, via the metal pressure point and its wooden holder. For this I used the industry-standard tool for testing SD card bend resistance: house bricks. I bribed my 7 year old son to stack the bricks on top of the Armor Gold card one by one, while I steadied the wooden 'carrier' so all the pressure was exerted onto the SD card via the metal strip. Watch the video below to see whether the Armor Gold card survived:

I genuinely wasn't expecting the card to perform anywhere near as well as it did in this test. To hardly bend at all with that amount of weight concentrated across such a narrow sliver of card is incredible. The total weight of the four bricks plus the wooden carrier is 10kg. Now consider that that weight is focussed into a strip of metal just 1mm in thickness, resting on its edge across the middle of the SD card. An SD card is 24mm wide, so that's 24 square millimetres of contact patch. Convert 10kg and 24mm into freedom units and you get 22.05lb of force, multiplied by 0.0372 square inches of contact patch. Then scale the weight in line with the contact patch and you end up with a bending pressure of 593PSI.

All well and good, but for comparison we also need to know how much bending pressure a conventional, plastic SD card can withstand. So I performed the exact same test with just such a card, and the difference was profound:

Under the weight of just one brick, the card was visibly bending. By three bricks it was bent so badly that the internals had probably already been destroyed. Add the fourth brick and the plastic didn't split in two, but the electrical contacts did part company with the rest of the card, and the card won't be sliding into a camera any time soon.

The Armor Gold card worked just fine after my bend test, and it was also unscathed by a drop from over the rated 5-meter height. A dunking into a sink-full of water was of no issue either. I was fast running out of ways to kill the Armor Gold card, so I decided to give it the ultimate test: could it survive being run over by a car? To be clear, Lexar in no way suggests the card could survive this - I just wanted to try it for your (and my) morbid curiosity. And as this is a review sample card, my own money wasn't on the line!

I was assuming the card would emerge somewhat squashed, dented or bent, but it survived almost entirely unscathed - just one light scratch. I therefore had high hopes that I could plug the card right back into my computer and it would work perfectly, but alas, it was not to be. While the computer did detect the card upon insertion, it couldn't be accessed. I tried to reformat it using specialist software, but again, nothing. I suspect that although the metal casing evidently 'bounced back' from being squashed, the memory chips within were crushed to oblivion. Still, unless you're a complete klutz and leave your Armor Gold card directly in the path of a passing car, you can be confident that it'll survive all but the most gratuitous abuse.

Verdict

Innovation is hard to find in the SD card sector: you can make a card faster, and give it more capacity, and that's normally about it. But what Lexar has done here is quite remarkable. The toughness is certainly no gimmick: the Armor Gold card is way, way stronger than a regular SD card. It's so tough that, based on my testing, I'd trust it to survive any reasonable abuse without so much as a scratch.

In terms of file transfer speed, I couldn't quite match Lexar's read/write speed claims, but many other SD cards also come up a bit short in this respect, and the card is still comfortably fast enough for high-res continuous shooting or recording 4K video.

Naturally, you pay a premium for the Armor Gold's toughness: a (plastic) 256GB Lexar Professional Gold series UHS-II card with the same 280MB/s read and 205MB/s write speeds currently costs around $70, whereas a 256GB Armor Gold card will set you back $120. But there are also plenty of regular plastic SD cards that cost more than an equivalent capacity Armor Gold card - Lexar's pricing isn't unreasonable.

So if your data is precious, or if you regularly shoot in adverse conditions where there's a real possibility of card damage, paying a little extra for an Armor Gold card is well worth it for peace of mind.

If you regularly shoot and edit on location, you'll likely need to transport a collection of memory cards, along with a card reader. Add in a separate USB cable and, at best, you've got an annoying bundle of clutter. But at worst you could easily lose one element of this critical workflow bundle. That's where the PGYTech CreateMate comes into its own. It's an all-in-one memory card reader and card storage case, which also contains its own built-in USB-C cable. It's even water- and shock-resistant, giving even more peace of mind. Several versions are available to suit different card formats, but here we're testing the CFexpress Type B / SD reader (see our full review of the SD/microSD CreateMate).

A separate but similar version of this CFexpress CreateMate Card Reader Case is also available for those using the smaller Type A CFexpress cards, commonly used on Sony mirrorless cameras.

Specifications

Features

In its closed state, the CreateMate is a subtly designed device which effectively hides what lies within. Its soft silicone cover (available in black or Moss Green) provides protection against drops, though it can be removed to reveal a sleek aluminium alloy exterior that'll compliment most laptops. Even without the silicone skin, the CreateMate is IP54-rated against dust and water ingress.

To access your cards and reveal the card reader, simply press on one end and out pops a plastic inner section containing everything you need. The slide action is smooth yet with a reassuring amount of resistance, indicating the ingress protection seals are doing their job. To connect the CreateMate to a computer, you'll need to reveal the short USB-C cable. This is pressed into the edges of the plastic module: pull the small red tab and the end of the USB connector will pop out just enough that you can grip it and then pull the cable out from its recess that runs round the bottom and opposite edge of the device.

The CreatMate is compatible with Windows, Mac OS, Android and iPad OS - just plug and play - though you will require a Type-C to Type-A adapter to use it with an older computer which lacks Type C ports. The card reader uses a USB 3.2 Gen2 interface, which has a theoretical maximum bus speed of 1250 megabytes per second. In practice that'll be more like 1000MB/s in real-world use, which is significantly faster than a UHS-II SD card, but some way short of the maximum speed of some of the best CFexpress Type B cards, which can reach speeds approaching 4000MB/s. To enable the full speed potential of the latest CFexpress 4.0 cards, you'd need a USB4 or Thunderbolt 3/4 interface, but such card readers are still relatively uncommon, with most manufacturers still utilizing the USB 3.2 Gen 2 standard, like PGYTech.

Performance

PGYTech claims the CreateMate should be capable of Type B transfer speeds of up to 1000MB/s, and UHS-II SD / microSD card speeds of up to 312MB/s. To test this, I used the CrystalDiskMark storage benchmarking software, with the CreateMate connected to a USB4 port on a fast laptop. USB4 is 4x faster than USB 3.2 Gen 2, so there should be no bottlenecks when speed testing. My test cards of choice were a Delkin Black CFexpress 4.0 Type B card capable of up to 3530 MB/s read and 3250MB/s write speeds - again, more than enough to max out the CreateMate. I also broke out my fastest SDXC card - a UHS-II V90 card with a maximum rated speed of 285MB/s read and 180MB/s write.

The Type B card performed exactly as expected, being USB-bottlenecked to 1055MB/s read and 1000MB/s write speeds. Switching to the SD card resulted in a maximum read speed of 266MB/s - not far of the card's maximum rated read speed - while the 179MB/s write rate is pretty much exactly what the card should achieve.

Assessing peak transfer speeds using benchmarking software is fine, but there's still no substitute for measuring the speed of actual, real-world file transfers. So I used a 32 gigabyte video file and transferred it to and from the same Type B and SD cards, recording the average and peak read/write speeds for both:

I'd always expect real-world transfer speeds to be slightly lower than the figures recorded by benchmarking software, but the CreateMate did manage to record some pretty respectable read/write speeds from my test card. SD transfer speeds were equally impressive, exactly matching the results I recorded from the SD/microSD version of the CreateMate, as well as my usual go-to standalone SD card reader from Prograde Digital.

Verdict

I've seen plenty of multi-purpose devices over the years which claim to boost versatility and convenience, but end up being annoyingly compromised. That's not the case here though: the CreateMate is a genuinely useful tool for on-the-go creatives. If you shoot with a high-end camera that has SD and Type B slots, it's ideal, providing both storage space and ingress/drop protection for your precious memory cards. The device itself is reassuringly well made, and I found the card reader to perform as well as it could within the restrictions of the USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface.

It'd be easy to criticise PGYTech for using this USB standard instead of the faster USB4 revision, which could enable the latest CFexpress 4.0 cards to run unconstrained. But the reality is the majority of standalone Type B readers are also USB 3.2 Gen 2, and adopting a quicker revision would likely have increased the CreateMate's price too much. Even with the relatively 'slow' USB 3.2 connection, read speeds of over 800MB/s are not to be sniffed at. Unless you're transferring vast amounts of data on a daily basis, those extra few seconds of transfer time are unlikely to get frustrating. You're more likely to be annoyed by the relatively bulky size of the CreateMate, but that's a necessary side effect of the device's card storage space and water resistance.

Ultimately, if you need an all-in-one card reader and card storage solution that'll survive the demands of daily abuse, the PGYTech CFexpress CreateMate Card Reader Case won't disappoint.

Let's face it, memory card readers aren't the most exciting gadgets in town, and the same can be said for memory card cases/wallets. But what if you were to combine the two together? Then you'd have something a bit special, and this is exactly the approach PGYTech has taken with its CreateMate High-speed Card Reader Case. We're testing the dual slot SD and microSD version here, but other CreateMate reader/cases are available for different card formats.

Specifications

Features

Designed with drone and action camera users in mind, the SD+microSD variant of the CreateMate sports a dual slot card reader that can support data transfer from both card formats simultaneously. Transfer speed is advertised at up to 312MB/s, indicating the reader is compatible with faster UHS-II SD cards. In addition to the dual slot card reader, the CreateMate can store 4 full-size SD cards, a further 4 microSD cards (for some reason PGYTech call these TF cards - an obsolete name for the same card format - microSD cards are identical), along with 2 Nano SIM cards.

In its closed state, the CreateMate is an anonymous looking device that could easily be mistaken for a small power bank, thanks to its matte aluminium alloy shell. If you need toughness over style, then there's an included soft silicone skin that can be slipped over the aluminium to add drop and shock protection, though even without this the CreateMate is IP54 dust-and splash-resistant. You can choose between black or Moss Green colors for the silicone skin.

To reveal the cards within, you simply push on one end and out pops the reader, storage slots and integral USB lead, all in one unit. The slide action is satisfyingly smooth and precise - I found myself using it as a fidget toy for a while! When fully open, the internal section stays out and doesn't fall back into the shell. To connect the short captive USB-C cable, you first pull the small red catch on the edge next to the card reader slots. Then the USB plug pops out just enough for you to remove it from its stowage space.

The cable sits neatly in a recessed slot that runs round the base and opposite edge of the device - it can be pulled out easily, giving you a USB cable approximately 6 inches in length. On one side of the CreateMate there are slots for two SD cards and 4 microSD cards. Flip over and there are two more SD slots, a pair of Nano Slim slots, and even a handy SIM tray eject tool. When you're ready to pack up, just press in the cable and USB plug so they sit flush with the edges of the device, then the internal section can be slid back inside the outer housing.

Performance

To test whether the CreateMate's card-reading performance can match the quality of its design, I connected it to a fast laptop with USB4 connectivity. This is more than fast enough to max out the CreateMate's USB 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) connection, so there would be no bottlenecks during speed testing. I broke out my fastest UHS-II V90 SDXC card and a UHS-II V60 microSD card, before running the CrystalDiskMark storage benchmarking app to measure the fastest read and write speeds that the CreateMate could facilitate:

I also tested the exact same SD and microSD cards in my usual card reader - a ProGrade Digital PGM0.5 SDXC/microSDXC UHS-II Dual-Slot Mobile Card Reader - and achieved almost identical results.

Assessing peak transfer speeds using benchmarking software is fine, but there's still no substitute for measuring the speed of actual, real-world file transfers. So I used a 10.4 gigabyte video file and transferred it to and from the same SD and microSD cards, recording the average and peak read/write speeds:

Again, these numbers are basically the same as with my ProGrade reader, indicating the cards are working at their full potential.

Verdict

PGYTech has come up with a genuinely useful product here. The CreateMate is an ideal travel companion for on-the-go creatives, housing your essential cards and a card reader in one handy package. My initial concern was that such an all-in-one device might be compromised in some way, but that's not the case. The design is excellent, from the neatly-stowed USB cable, to the satisfyingly smooth ejection/retraction mechanism. Factor the super-fast SD and microSD transfer speeds that are on par with my usual top-tier card reader, and there really are no downsides.

Naturally, the CreateMate is larger than a standalone SD card reader, but that's an unavoidable result of having multiple card storage slots and IP54 water resistance.

If you're after a fast SD card reader to take on location, the PGYTech CreateMate High-Speed Card Reader Case is a must-buy, especially since it's priced in line with many standalone UHS-II card readers. There are also two types of PGYTech CFexpress CreateMate Card Reader Case for those using Type A or Type B CFexpress cards.

If there's one bit of camera equipment that photographers can never get enough of, it's memory cards. A fast memory card with plenty of storage is worth its weight in gold – which is why we were so excited to see the SanDisk Extreme Pro 512GB SDXC memory card on sale for just £65.19 – which is a staggering £100 off the recommended retail price!

With write speeds of up to 200MB/s and read speeds of up to 140MB/s, this memory card is well-suited to photographers who capture high-speed subjects and regularly use burst mode. 

Read more

Best memory card for your camera: SD, microSD, CFexpress & CF
Best CFexpress cards - Type B or Type A
Best microSD cards
Best memory card readers: transfer images and video to your computer fast

Let’s face it, the best camera deals are where it’s at on Amazon Prime Day. Who doesn’t love pursuing camera bargains? But plenty of other camera equipment is on offer, too. And while spending your hard-earned on a handful of memory cards isn’t exactly most photographers’ idea of a good time, it does make good financial sense. After all, memory cards aren’t always cheap.

CFexpress cards, especially, can set you back quite a few bucks. And while a shiny new camera or lens might be calling my name, I’m always wanting for additional, faster, and/or more reliable storage. So, with my 'engrossing' introduction out of the way, I’ve compiled a list of some of the best memory card bargains you can find during Amazon Prime Big Deal Days.

• Don't miss today's best Amazon Prime camera deals

Do note that memory cards can and do go wrong. Most camera manufacturers do list recommended memory card brands, which may offer greater peace of mind, but these tend to be the bigger brands that come at a more premium price point. Ultimately, it’s up to your discretion as a consumer as to which brands you choose to purchase.

Right, that’s the really boring bit out of the way. Here are the ever so slightly more interesting deals *yaaaawn*...

You do need to be a Prime member to take advantage of some of the deals below, but you may be eligible for a free trial. If not, you can simply purchase a subscription and cancel it immediately so you’re only charged for the one month.

Looking for more Amazon Big Deal Days bargains? Check out the best drone deals.

Memory cards might not be the most exciting purchase, but they’re indispensable - without one, even the best camera is useless. I always stock up on SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I cards, not for their size but for their reliability, great value, and the fact that they’re almost always discounted ahead of Amazon Prime’s big camera sales.

• see all of today's Amazon Prime camera deals

Sure, 64GB might not seem like much in an era of 8K video and high-resolution sensors, but for everyday photography, it’s plenty - and at this price, they’re practically impossible to resist.

It’s become something of a ritual for me now. I ignore memory cards for most of the year and wait until Prime Day - or the days leading up to it - when prices start to tumble and full-price suddenly looks ridiculous. SanDisk’s 64GB Ultra cards often drop into impulse-buy territory, and if you need more room, the 128GB and 256GB versions usually follow suit at prices that feel like a steal.

The real trick is having spares. I never head out without at least two or three extras in my bag. Cards fill up, fail, or simply vanish, and having backups means you’re never caught short - no deleting files on the fly or missing a shot while swapping cards. And when you’ve picked them up for less than the cost of a pub lunch, there’s no reason not to stock up.

SanDisk Ultra cards have always hit the sweet spot for me. They’re not overkill for everyday or even semi-professional use, yet they’re fast, reliable, and built for real-world shooting, whether that’s documenting family life, covering events, or spending an afternoon out with the camera. I’ve filled more of them than I can count, and not one has ever let me down.

So why pay full whack? Prime Day is basically a once-a-year restock event for me. I buy cards like people buy batteries at Christmas – just enough to get me through another season or two. It’s a small investment in peace of mind, and at Prime Day prices, it's hard to make a case against it.

If you shoot regularly and you’re not taking advantage of these sales, you’re missing a trick. The SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I is always on offer, and if you need more storage, the 128GB and 256GB versions are rarely far behind. Just wait for the price to drop… and buy!

Shop the memory card

With fast transfer speeds, reliable performance and a price that’s hard to ignore, the SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I is a smart addition to any camera bag – ideal for everyday shooting, and right now, it’s cheap enough to pick up without hesitation.

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Don't forget – the best memory cards need the best memory card readers to get the best out of them!

Lexar has unveiled a 1TB version of its Armor Gold SDXC UHS-II card, positioned in the brand’s top-tier high-performance category and designed for professional photographers and videographers who demand reliability, speed, and resilience in challenging shooting conditions.

The card’s standout feature is its gold stainless-steel construction, making it 37 times stronger than standard SD memory cards. Rated IP68 for dust- and water-resistance and certified to withstand drops of up to five meters, the Armor Gold card is built to endure heavy impacts, extreme weather, and the rigours of high-speed, high-mobility shooting scenarios. Ideal for those capturing sporting events and outdoor adventures, as operating temperatures range from -25°C to 85°C, ensuring performance even in extreme environments.

Lexar has simplified the design for durability: there’s no write-protection switch, and the ribless body reduces points of weakness, while laser engravings replace traditional labels to ensure surface information never wears off. The card’s steel body also helps dissipate heat, supporting long-lasting performance even in demanding conditions.

Performance is equally impressive. The Armor Gold SDXC UHS-II card delivers up to 205MB/s write speeds and V60 video speed class support, making it capable of recording high-resolution 4K 60P and 6K 30P footage with minimal lag or dropped frames. When paired with a USB 3.2 card reader, read speeds reach up to 280MB/s, enabling photographers and videographers to offload large files quickly.

The card is available in capacities ranging from 128GB to 1TB and comes with lifetime access to Lexar’s Recovery Tool to restore accidentally deleted files or formatted drives, plus a limited lifetime warranty.

The Lexar Armor Gold SDXC UHS-II 1TB card is available now in the UK for £474.99 and is available to preorder in the US for $369.99.

Lexar promises that photographers and videographers will get a storage solution that combines rugged durability with professional-grade performance, making it a dependable choice for high-speed shooting, post-production work, and peace of mind in the field.

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Check out our guides to the best memory cards and the best memory card readers.

Memory cards, particularly SD cards, are possibly the most confusing sector of camera tech on the market. Sure, they're everywhere, so getting hold of one is easy. But buying the right memory card for your camera and your shooting needs? That's quite a minefield. Capacity, capacity class, numerous speed classes and measurement systems, price per gigabyte, manufacturer reputability: with so much to consider, you'd be entirely forgiven for just selecting the largest capacity you can afford, sorting by price=lowest, then blindly buying whatever comes out top.

But help is at hand. For staters, we have our own handy guide explaining the myriad of confusing numbers and symbols found on an SD card. But, though it pains me to say it, YouTuber Wolf Amri has done an even better job of making sense of the SD card headache in this comprehensive yet totally accessible video guide.

The take-home really comes down to buying a card that will let your camera run at its best - whether that be exceeding its maximum video capture bit rate, or the data rate when burst shooting stills - but not going over the top and splashing out on a card that's so fast your camera won't ever make use of the excess speed.

Of course, there's always an argument for just buying the fastest, largest card you can afford, so you stay futureproofed for when you get a camera that can make use of the card's full performance. While there's nothing inherently wrong with this approach, by the time you upgrade camera in a few years, you'd likely be able to buy a card of equivalent or even better performance for significantly less money.

The excess/unused performance issue becomes particularly prevalent when we look at CFexpress cards.

While SD cards vary hugely in performance, with the cheapest, slowest cards able to noticeably bottleneck the performance of high-end cameras, CFexpress cards are very different. Whether Type A or B, you'll be very hard pressed to find one which isn't fast enough to exceed the maximum possible image or video recording requirements of your camera. The latest CFexpress 4.0 speed standard for Type A and B cards is so fast that, in the case of Type B cards, not only will your current camera not even come close to exploiting its full speed, chances are even cameras released in the next 2-3 years won't either. CFexpress 4.0 Type B cards really are that quick!

So with Black Friday fast approaching, by all means make the most of those lowest-ever prices, but don't get too carried away: there's no point in spending extra on a memory card that's simply too fast for your camera.

CFexpress cards may be faster than the traditional SD format, but the larger, faster memory card type typically isn’t cheap. During a one-day-only deal, however, B&H is cutting $200 off a 1TB CFExpress card from Lexar, putting the memory card at half price.

The Lexar 1TB Professional Gold CFexpress 4.0 Type B memory card boasts read speeds up to 3,600 MB/s, write speeds up to 3,300 MB/s, and sustained write speeds up to 3,000 MB/s. That’s wrapped up in a design that’s protected against extreme temperatures, vibration, dust, drops, shock, and bending. The card also has a 12,000x wear-out rating.

The 1TB version of the Lexar Professional Gold card typically retails for $400. But right now, B&H has a $200 coupon that cuts the card’s price in half, making the faster cards even more affordable than Lexar's 1700 MB/s Professional Gold CFexpress cards. The deal is part of B&H’s Daily Deal Zone, and it ends just before midnight today, July 28.

That deal puts the faster Gold version at a lower price than a 512GB Lexar Professional CFExpress Type B that only offers up to 1750 MB/s, one of the budget picks on Digital Camera World’s guide to the best memory cards.

I always turn to the same few trusted brands when it comes to memory cards, and Lexar is one of them. My mirrorless still uses plain old SD cards, or I’d seriously consider grabbing one of these discounted CFexpress cards for myself.

Miss the short window for the $200 off coupon? Adorama has this CFexpress card discounted to $289.99.

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Browse the best memory cards or the best CFexpress cards.

CFexpress Type A memory cards used to be extortionately expensive, with Sony having a stranglehold on the market. Thankfully those days are long gone, and the Type A market is wide open with plenty of competition and rapidly falling prices. And it seems those prices have hit an all-time low, as you can now pick up a 1TB Type A card for just $220 at Amazon (£163 at Amazon UK) - that's around $80 less than the next cheapest 1TB/960GB Type A offering.

Read more: the best CFexpress cards you can buy right now

The card in question is from a Chinese brand called Bilitu, and no, that's not a name I'm familiar with, either. In addition to the generous 1TB capacity, this is also a CFexpress 4.0 card, meaning it's around twice as fast as the first generation of Type A cards. Read/write speeds are claimed to be 1780MB/s and 1600MB/s, respectively. There's also a VPG400 rating, so the card should be capable of sustaining a minimum 400MB/s write rate during video recording, making it suitable for 8K raw capture.

The Bilitu card is also available in 256GB and 512GB capacities, and while both are also very well priced, it's the top 1TB version that offers the best value thanks to its lower price per gigabyte of storage.

But let's face it, it hardly matters how cheap this card is: if you've got the cash to drop on a high-end Sony camera with a Type A slot, you're not going to cheap-out on a Type A card from an unknown brand with questionable reliability. However, there is still a benefit from cards like this: they encourage a race to the bottom, with established manufacturers being forced to drop their prices in order to compete.

I have been keeping my eye out for a Type A memory card for my Sony mirrorless camera for a couple of months now - and I have just seen a Prime Day deal to make me take the plunge and buy one.

• See all of today's Amazon Prime camera deals

The Nextorage 480GB card costs £122.39 - with a nice 20% saving in the Amazon sale. It is a lot more than the SDXC cards I have been using in my Sony A7 IV camera since I bought it back in March – but when you think of it in terms of how much you pay per gigabyte this card is an absolute steal. It works out at just 25p per gigabyte!

480GB is a big capacity for a card - almost half a terabyte of space for my Raw files and video footage. But the real attraction of the CFexpress Type A card option on my camera is the superfast write speeds that it offers - a staggering 950MB per second! That will be great when recording long 4K clips - or for shooting prolonged burst modes using my A7 IV 10fps high-speed continuous shooting mode.

Nextorage may not be the best-known memory card company in the business – but they have not been around that long. It is a Japanese company that was founded by ex-Sony engineers – and of course, they are the people who pioneered the CFexpress Type A standard, which, for the moment at least, is only used on Sony mirrorless and cinema cameras.

Check out our pick of the best Amazon Prime Day camera deals we have seen so far

I have keeping my eye out for a Type A memory card for my Sony mirrorless camera for a couple of months now - and I have just seen a Prime Day deal to make me take the plunge and buy one.

• See all of today's Amazon Prime camera deals

The Nextorage 480GB card costs $139.99 - with a nice 30% saving in the Amazon sale. It is a lot more than the SDXC cards I have been using in my Sony A7 IV camera since I bought it back in March – but when you think of it in terms of how much you pay per gigabyte this card is an absolute steal. It works out at just 29 cents per gigabyte!

480GB is a big capacity for a card - almost half a terabyte of space for my Raw files and video footage. But the real attraction of the CFexpress Type A card option on my camera is the superfast write speeds that it offers - a staggering 950MB per second! That will be great when recording long 4K clips - or for shooting prolonged burst modes using my A7 IV 10fps high-speed continuous shooting mode.

Nextorage may not be the best-known memory card company in the business – but they have not been around that long. It is a Japanese company that was founded by ex-Sony engineers – and of course, they are the people who pioneered the CFexpress Type A standard, which, for the moment at least, is only used on Sony mirrorless and cinema cameras.

Check out our pick of the best Amazon Prime Day camera deals we have seen so far

Sony’s high-end mirrorless and cinema options are impressive cameras – but they’re also data hogs. Sony, however, has now doubled the speed of its CFexpress Type A memory cards with the launch of two new options, alongside a specialized reader for faster transfers to a computer.

Both the Sony Tough 960GB CEA-G960T and 1920GB CEA-G1920T, announced on July 09, can write data as fast as 1700 MB/s. That translates to a Video Performance Guarantee for stable video recording at 400MB/s, which meets the data demands of shooting 8K H.265/XAVC HS 4:2:0 10-Bit on the Sony A1 II.

Both cards can read the data of speeds of up to 1800 MB/s. Together with the card’s write speeds, that’s more than twice as fast as Sony’s earlier CFexpress Type A Tough models.

As part of the Tough series, Sony says that the new CFexpress cards have around five times the drop resistance and ten times the bend strength of a typical Type A standard card. The cards are also resistant to dust and water, along with high temperatures, x-rays, and UV exposure.

Fast cards won’t reach peak read performance without a card reader that’s just as fast – which is why Sony is also launching the MRW-G3 card reader, which supports CFexpress 4 and USB 40Gbps.

The speed and high capacity come at a cost, however. The 960GB card retails for $585 and the 1920GB for $950. International pricing and availability have not yet been announced, but that translates to around £430 / AU$895 and £700 / AU$1,454. The card reader MRW-G3 is expected to retail for about $150 (around £110 / AU$230).

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Browse the best CFexpress cards and the best memory card readers, or dive into Sony's Prime Day camera and lens deals.

Memory cards aren’t glamorous, but they’re absolutely essential. Without one, your camera is just an expensive paperweight. I’ve always stocked up on SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I cards – not because they’re the biggest, but because they’re dependable, affordable, and always discounted in the lead-up to the Amazon Prime camera deals.

• see all of today's Amazon Prime camera deals

Now, 64GB might not sound like much in a world of 8K video and 45MP sensors. But for everyday shooting, they’re more than enough – and when they’re this cheap, they’re almost too good to pass up!

It’s become part of my routine now. I don’t even look at memory cards throughout the rest of the year. I wait until Prime Day or the week leading up to it, when prices start to tumble and you can swoop in on the kind of deals that make full-price look silly.

SanDisk’s 64GB Ultra cards regularly dip into impulse-buy territory, and if you need more space? The 128GB and 256GB versions are usually on sale, too, at prices that feel like a bit of a gift.

The real key is having spares. I never leave home without two or three extras in the bag. Cards get full. Cards fail. Cards get misplaced. Having backups means you’re always ready – no fiddling with file deletes mid-shoot, no awkward pauses when you should be firing frames.

And when you’ve picked them up for less than the price of a pub lunch, you’re not stressing about the cost!

SanDisk Ultra cards have always struck the right balance with me. They're not overkill for casual or even semi-serious shooting, but they’re fast and reliable enough for the kind of work most people do – documenting family life, capturing events, or just heading out for an afternoon of street photography. I’ve filled dozens over the years, and I can’t recall a single failure.

So why pay full whack? Prime Day is basically a once-a-year restock event for me. I buy cards like people buy batteries at Christmas – just enough to get me through another season or two. It’s a small investment in peace of mind, and at Prime Day prices it's hard to make a case against it.

If you shoot regularly and you’re not taking advantage of these sales, you’re missing a trick. The SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I is always on offer, and if you need more storage, the 128GB and 256GB versions are rarely far behind. Just wait for the price to drop… and buy!

Shop the memory card

With fast transfer speeds, reliable performance and a price that’s hard to ignore, the SanDisk 64GB Ultra SDXC UHS-I is a smart addition to any camera bag – ideal for everyday shooting, and right now, it’s cheap enough to pick up without hesitation.

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Don't forget – the best memory cards need the best memory card readers to get the best out of them!

Pergear has launched a new affordable CFexpress Type B card. The Pergear CFexpress 4.0 Type B Memory Card conforms to the next-generation CFexpress 4.0 standard, making it twice as fast as the first incarnation of CFexpress Type B cards. Maximum transfer speeds are rated at 3500MB/s read and 3400MB/s write, while the card is claimed to maintain a 1500MB/s minimum write speed. This kind of extreme speed means the card is suitable for 8K RAW or 4K 120fps video recording, and Pergear says the card is capable of recording 1,000+ RAW images per minute with zero frame drops.

The new card is available in 512GB and 1TB capacities, costing $126.65 and $211.65, respectively. This makes the Pergear CFexpress 4.0 Type B Memory Card one of the cheapest on the market in the 512GB and 1TB sectors, undercutting many CFexpress 2.0 cards that are significantly slower than Pergear's new offering. For around $60 more you can also purchase the card bundled with a Type B card reader. Pergear states that the new cards are built to endure extreme conditions, being shockproof, waterproof, X-ray-proof, and temperature-resistant, and are also backed by a 5-year warranty.

The new card is reported to be compatible with the following cameras:

Blow up the balloons, bake a cake and spray a bottle of champagne: the humble SD card is celebrating its 25th birthday!

Throughout the last 25 years, SD and microSD memory cards have sold more than 12 billion cards and evolved by offering massive storage capacities and lightning fast speeds, meeting industry needs. SD memory cards remain the most-used removable storage card for consumer electronic devices. The SD Association

2025 also marks the 20th anniversary of the diminutive microSD card, and to mark this double birthday:

The SDA has contributed to OneTreePlanted and the Morino Project, expediting the planting of 25,000 trees around the world to help fight climate change. It also contributed $25,000 to the Audiopedia Foundation to support its efforts to empower African women through preloading audio content onto microSD memory cards, allowing the most basic mobile phones to become portals of empowerment, turning isolated communities into connected hubs of health, financial, and educational information.

All well and good, but let's also take a moment to appreciate just want a phenomenal product the SD card is. Tech comes and goes, but few forms of storage media have stood the test of time like the SD card. Other card formats - CompactFlash, Memory Stick, xD-Picture Card, to name just a few - have long been consigned to the history books, but even after a quarter of a century, the SD card shows little sign of fading into obscurity. Sure, it may have been usurped at the high end of the memory market by CFexpress, but even high-end cameras like the Canon EOS R3 and Fujifilm GFX100RF still have SD card slots.

The history of the SD card format can actually trace its roots back as far as 1996, when SanDisk (now a WD brand, but back then it was independent) set about creating another long-forgotten flash memory format: MultiMediaCard (MMC). This card, designed in collaboration with Siemens, was intended to be a more compact, user-friendly memory card than the rugged but bulky CompactFlash card introduced in 1994. The thin form factor with surface contacts for power and data transfer was a direct response to Sony's proprietary Memory Stick format. However, against the might of Sony, MMC struggled with low adoption and few supporting products.

And yet the need for an alternative to Memory Stick and other brand-specific flash memory formats was still present. In 1999 SanDisk was approached by Toshiba and Panasonic to develop the basic MMC format into a new memory card with a sturdier design, higher speeds, additional security features, and other improved capabilities. This was a top-secret development, as at this time the rise of portable devices like MP3 players requiring solid state storage was just taking off. The potential for a widely-used, standardised flash memory format was therefore enormous.

Thanks to basing the SD standard on pre-existing MMC technology (the two formats appear almost identical, and MMC cards can even be used in a standard SD slot), it only took one year between SD conception and the first cards going on sale in 2000. The first consumer card had a capacity of just 8 megabytes, but it was only a matter of months before capacities had reached 64MB. With Toshiba and Panasonic aggressively launching multiple devices that supported SD cards, the format’s widespread adoption was accelerated. By late 2003 SD had surpassed both CompactFlash and Memory Stick to become the dominant flash memory format - a position it's held ever since. Interestingly, though Sony effectively surrendered the flash format war in 2010 when it began supporting both Memory Stick and SD cards in new products, it refused to abandon the format. Incredibly, even cameras as recent as the A6600 can still use Memory Stick cards.

So what next for the SD card? The next generation of SD - SD Express - has for several years been touted as a rival to CFexpress, but as yet only the Nintendo Switch 2 has appeared as a device that actually supports the format, albeit the microSD Express variant. It would seem that by now CFexpress - both Type A and Type B - has effectively cemented itself as the go-to format for high-speed memory. But that still leaves space for the smaller, cheaper SD card to retain the mainstream memory segment, while microSD continues to have a monopoly on ultra-small removable storage.

It looks like both forms of the SD card will be with us for many more years to come.