Recently, there’s been a resurgence in interest in the original Google Pixel smartphone, which was released back in 2016 with a modest single rear 12MP camera, a Sony sensor, and 32GB of base storage. However, it’s not for nostalgia or some kind of retro kick.

In an aggressive marketing bid, the search engine hegemon offered all Pixel 1 customers lifetime unlimited original-resolution, uncompressed photo and video storage. And now, people are buying up Pixel 1 phones – which you can find on eBay for under $100 (approximately £75 / AU$140) – hoping to take advantage of this deal, which Google still honors to this day.

The only caveat was, and still is, that files need to be uploaded via the Google Photos app from the Pixel 1 device, which isn’t ideal. Still, it means users can get around any current storage plan limits by first transferring files from other devices to the Pixel 1 before uploading them to the cloud.

Above: this tutorial shows exactly how people are exploiting the Google Pixel 1 unlimited storage hack

It’s a seemingly fail-safe hack, too. Even though it’s been 10 years since the Pixel 1 was unveiled, if Google decided to revoke the deal, it would likely need to navigate a legal minefield of breach-of-contract clauses.

I really don't think the tech giant is worried about these storage hackers taking up too much real estate on its servers either.

While by 2023 an estimated 40 million Pixel units across all generations had sold, the company revoked the unlimited storage benefit from Generation 6 (2021) onwards. In fact, Google had already downgraded the unlimited storage deal to compressed-quality files by the release of Generation 5 the previous year.

But do I recommend exploiting this hack? Honestly, no. While it can save you money in the long run, transferring all your files to an early-generation Pixel device, either manually or via a syncing app, is a hassle. Plus, the whole scheme relies on an old smartphone that may or may not give out after long.

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Here’s our expert pick of the best camera phones and also the best portable hard drives and SSDs.

If you need an absolutely gargantuan amount of storage space for saving huge uncompressed 8K video files or similar, TerraMaster has the solution for you. The new D8 Hybrid 2 can combine up to 4 SATA HDDs/SSDs and 4 M.2 NVMe SSDs in a single enclosure. This design claims to provide a flexible, high-performance platform for video editing and media libraries, with support for up to 152 terabytes of total capacity, depending on drive configuration. Just remember that the D8 Hybrid 2 is a drive enclosure - you need to choose and purchase the HDDs and/or SSDs to fit inside it separately.

To ensure your data can be accessed quickly, the D8 Hybrid 2 uses a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface, enabling read speeds of up to 1020MB/s with a single NVMe SSD. Equip the enclosure with four HDDs and read speeds could top out at 980MB/s, depending on RAID configuration. This performance translates to a 5GB HD movie transferring in around five seconds.

The D8 Hybrid 2 features TerraMaster Power Management technology to improve energy efficiency, enhance reliability, and deliver faster drive wake-up times. The enclosure also benefits from improved internal airflow, with active cooling coming from an intelligent temperature-controlled fluid dynamic bearing fan rated for over 50,000 hours operation. Tool-free drive trays permit simple and secure installation of HDDs and SSDs: M.2 NVMe SSDs can be installed using a side sliding cover and hand-tightened screws.

Designed for modern hybrid workflows, the D8 Hybrid 2 supports hot and cold data separation. This allows users to store frequently accessed 'hot' data on NVMe SSDs for high-speed access, while archival data can be stored on high-capacity hard disk drives for cost-effective backup. This two-tier arrangement makes the enclosure ideal for studios, photographers and videographers that manage large volumes of mixed-use data.

The D8 Hybrid 2 is compatible with Windows, macOS, Linux, NAS systems, and a wide range of file systems. It can connect directly to computers, servers, TVs, set-top boxes, as well as Thunderbolt devices. TerraMaster also includes its complimentary TPC Backupper software for Windows backups, and it works with Apple Time Machine.

The TerraMaster D8 Hybrid 2 is available now at Amazon US for $299.99 (currently $239.99 with 20% coupon) and at Amazon UK for £299.99.

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

UGREEN is becoming quite the force in the world of NAS drives. Now boasting two series of drives, the entry-level, budget-friendly, personal cloud DH series and the high-performance, prosumer DXP series, UGREEN offers a wide range of products to suit most types of users.

The UGREEN NASync DH2300 belongs in the DH series and is a super compact two-bay NAS that functions as a private cloud. This makes it a particularly attractive alternative to paying for monthly Google One or iCloud subscriptions.

It's also a fantastic entry-level NAS for photographers who want a cheap backup solution and the ability to quickly dump large shoots via high-speed USB-A and USB-C ports. Unfortunately, there's no built-in SD card slot though.

Its reliance on a standard Gigabit network port also means it's never going to be the ideal solution for streaming raw, multi-gigabyte image files directly off the server in real-time.

Its biggest strength for photographers and families alike is its intelligent built-in photo management app. Backed by a dedicated AI smart chip, the system automatically scans your catalog to recognize faces, objects, and scenes. Because all of this processing happens locally inside the box, your family photos and professional shoots are never uploaded to a corporate web server, which helps to guarantee privacy.

UGREEN NASync DH2300: Specifications

UGREEN NASync DH2300: Design & Handling

The UGREEN NASync DH2300 is a sleek, minimalist, and aesthetically pleasing unit. The design and color choices follow firmly in line with almost all other UGREEN devices, from power banks to chargers. The modern design sets it apart from many other NAS alternatives which are chunky, industrial, and purely functional.

In terms of materials, UGREEN has chosen a plastic chassis styled in a two-tone gray palette. There's no metal in sight, and you can tell that as soon as you pick it up. I'd count this as a positive in terms of weight but a negative in terms of robust build quality. It feels pretty cheap, but that's no surprise given the price.

The internal bay trays are hidden below the top removal 'hood' and are constructed of thin plastic, which meant I had to treat them with a lot of care when inserting the hard drives. If you weren't careful, then you could definitely snap something. The trays are able to house 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch drives, with the included screws providing stability.

Thermal management is built into the design with vent cutouts subtly integrated at the bottom of both the left and right sides, working alongside ventilation holes in the top panel and the base to maximize airflow and heat dissipation. I never experienced the unit getting too hot, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the design.

The front panel is kept pretty minimal with an on/off button, three light indicators, and a USB-C port. At the back there is an RJ45 port, two USB-A ports, an HDMI port, and the DC power port. All in, it's a really nice design that's only let down by the budget materials.

UGREEN NASync DH2300: Performance

This is my first experience of using a UGREEN NAS drive, and having experienced a number of other brands, I think UGREEN has absolutely nailed the setup and software experience, especially when we're considering users who are unfamiliar with NAS.

I was able to get the NAS setup in less than ten minutes simply by plugging it into a power source, connecting it to my router, inserting my hard drive, and navigating through the easy-to-follow user guide.

I loved the ability to discover the NAS device through a variety of different methods. I opted to download the dedicated client via the UGREEN downloads page, and after a few simple procedures I was up and running quickly. My experience fills me with confidence that beginners to NAS technology will be absolutely fine.

The NAS can also be discovered via a browser or even with NFC detection on an NFC-enabled phone. UGREEN really has done a good job of making the NAS work with a variety of different devices and operating systems to make it a genuine alternative to existing familiar media backup solutions.

The DH2300 is powered by an 8-core Rockchip RK3576 processor and 4GB of LPDDR4X RAM, which makes it both snappy and efficient. It also features a Mali-G52 GPU and dedicated 6 TOPS NPU which comes into its own when transcoding for H.264, H.265, and AV1, alongside smooth 4K output via HDMI 2.1.

We all care about transfer speeds, and the DH2300 maxes out its single 1 GbE network port, delivering consistent real-world transfer speeds of roughly 110 MB/s to 115 MB/s for sequential reads and writes. These speeds are okay for backup and retrieval, but I wouldn't rely on it to stream footage for video editing, especially if it's 4K in size. For that you'll want a device that can deliver around 300 MB/s to 400 MB/s.

The UGREEN NASync DH2300 features a native Photos app that uses a built-in NPU for local AI-driven image processing. As a result, users can take advantage of facial recognition, object detection, and OCR text extraction tools. It also includes an intelligent cleanup tool for identifying duplicate or blurry photos to optimize storage.

During operation, the NAS is incredibly quiet, so you'll hardly notice it's there. You could even put it in a space you use regularly, and it'll blend into the background. It also draws just 10 to 15 watts of power, which means it's economical to run too.

UGREEN NASync DH2300: Final Verdict

The UGREEN NASync DH2300 is a superb, budget-friendly entry-level NAS that serves as an excellent private cloud alternative to costly subscriptions. It features a sleek design and an incredibly easy setup process that takes less than ten minutes via app, browser, or NFC.

Its biggest strength for families and photographers is its local, AI-driven photo management app, which automatically sorts images while keeping your data entirely secure and private at home.

Unfortunately, its low price point comes with notable hardware compromises. The lightweight plastic chassis and internal trays feel cheap, and performance is bottlenecked by a standard 1GbE port that limits transfer speeds to around 115 MB/s. This makes it too slow for serious, real-time 4K video editing.

Lacking support for M.2 NVMe drives, Docker, and virtual machines, this NAS also offers very limited scalability, meaning power users and tech enthusiasts should look elsewhere.

There has been some fun World Cup 2026 merch to accompany the soccer tournament, from the brilliant Lego World Cup Trophy to the Ilford film featuring analog photos from ExpiredFilmClub.

However, this might be the neatest World Cup gear I've seen so far: SanDisk has launched a range of FIFA-themed memory devices, including these USB flash drives that look like referee whistles.

They come in four regular flavors, one for each host nation of the 2026 FIFA World Cup and a generic "Global" version. It has to be said that Mexico's looks the best, with its stunning logo design, with Canada's stylized maple leaf and the USA's swirling stars and stripes also looking the business.

However, the coolest is a special Gold Edition that comes in a shiny gold finish worthy of a World Cup champion.

All four "whistles" (which sadly do not function as such) also come with a stylized SanDisk / FIFA ribbon, so you can live out your dreams of handing out red cards to those who have wronged you… and, of course, know that you've always got some memory with you by hanging it around your neck.

The USA, Canada and Gold drives are only available in 128GB capacities, while the Mexico and Global editions are also available in 64GB options. Each drive is preloaded with the SanDisk Memory Zone mobile app (for Android phones and tablets) and desktop app (for MacOS and Windows).

The 64GB drives are priced at $25.99 / £26.99, with the 128GB versions at $34.99 / £37.99, and the Gold Edition available for $37.99 / £46.99 (availability on the Gold Edition seems to vary by region and retailer). Each drive also comes with a collectible World Cup 2026 sticker.

Note that the actual sale prices are pretty variable (the Gold Edition is just £41.99 at Argos in the UK) and the SRPs / RRPs are way higher – the Gold Edition is listed at $87.99 on the SanDisk US website!

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Check out the best cameras for sports photography and the best lenses for sports photography.

LaCie's iconic bright orange Rugged portable hard drives have been searing our retinas since 2005, but it's recently been revealed by Global Distribution that two models in the Rugged range are going to be discontinued. You might assume these would be the oldest or slowest models in the line-up, but they're actually some of the newest and fastest drives: the Rugged SSD4, and Rugged SSD Pro5.

The Rugged SSD4 is/was available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities, each operating through a super-fast 40 Gbps USB4 interface, enabling transfer speeds of up to 4000MB/s read and 3800MB/s write. That's impressively quick, but the Rugged SSD Pro5 was even more rapid. It used a bleeding-edge 80 Gbps Thunderbolt 5 connection, allowing the drive to achieve an incredible 6700MB/s read speed and 5300MB/s write rate.

Both the Rugged SSD4 and Rugged SSD Pro5 were only launched last year, making it especially surprising that they should be discontinued after such a short production run. And the reason for this early demise? Why, it's ongoing lack of NAND flash memory, of course. Since the start of the year we've seen countless news stories of SSD and memory card price hikes due to the global shortage of flash memory. It seems that within this sector the fastest memory has seen the most dramatic price increases; the very memory that’s needed to construct portable SSDs like the Rugged SSD4 and Pro5.

When our sister website Toms Hardware reviewed the Rugged SSD Pro5 in February 2025, the 2TB version was priced at $400, and the 4TB $600. Right now at B&H the latter will set you back a cool $1600, equating to a 167% price increase in less than 18 months (the 2TB version is already listed as discontinued). It's unclear whether LaCie chose to discontinue these SSDs because it was no longer able to physically source the necessary flash memory to manufacture the drives. I’d speculate that the components are still available, but are now so expensive to source that the end product is no longer economically viable to market.

As for why flash memory is in such short supply and now commanding crazy prices; we can thank 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 and portable storage industries. SSD manufacturers like LaCie (and its parent company, Seagate) 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 unsustainably high prices we're seeing for the fastest and highest capacity portable SSDs.

Lexar and AFA's new Elite Legend Series of storage devices, including Lexar Air Portable SSDs and

Serious pro photographers might be interested in the SL500 Portable SSD Elite Legends Series combines read speeds of up to 2000MB/s and write speeds of up to 1800MB/s

Looking for something lighter and prepared to compromise on the speed? Lexar also has you covered with the 512GB or 1TB Air series of the even more portable SSD, which transfers files over USB 3.2 at a slightly more sedate 400 MB/s.

Lexar has also taken the opportunity to launch a co-branded

The problem for me, of course, as an Englishman, is that I'm not especially fond of the so-called talents of the Argentina Number 10 from forty years hence as celebrated by this design.

It is, of course, the famous Diego Maradona and so far as I'm concerned his most famous goal was the "Hand of God" goal scored in the 1986 World Cup in which England ended up losing to Argentina 2-1.

Not unreasonably, the idea of a goal assisted in its path by the hand – somewhat obvious from the video replay – isn't really something which impressed my fellow countrymen (and in 1986 it was only 20 years since England had last won a World Cup, so it didn't even seem impossible at the time).

There are many photographers who might like this device, however.

Scottish football fans have long rejoiced in England's bad luck, for a start!

We love a good portable SSD. They can provide a high-capacity and fast way to keep your images and videos mobile, and are often compatible with a variety of devices. There are plenty of options out there, so you need a pretty special product to stand out. The new Atom EX80 from Glyph looks like just that.

Read more: the best portable hard drives and SSDs

For starters, it's quick. Though it’s based around a USB4 interface like many other high-end portable SSDs, the EX80 uses the latest USB4 standard, which at 80Gbps is twice as fast as typical USB4 drives. This enables real-world transfer speeds of up to 7,000MB/s - enough speed to handle even 12K video with ease. In Glyph's own tests the EX80 was able to transfer 1TB of data in under 3 minutes, making it more than 3x faster than rival USB4 and Thunderbolt 5 SSDs. Glyph states that this is due to the EX80 being built for demanding, continuous file transfers, not just short bursts of peak speed that only looks good on spec sheets. In order to exploit the EX80's full speed potential, you will need a computer with the latest 80GB/s USB4 connectivity. Alternatively, the drive is compatible with Thunderbolt 5, which is also capable of 80GB/s. The drive will work with Thunderbolt 4 and 3 devices, though speed will be limited by their respective bus speeds.

To cope with this level of sustained transfer speed, the EX80 is constructed with a solid aluminium core and outer shell, enabling effective heat dissipation without the need for noisy fan cooling. A soft composite bumper increases shock protection, helping the EX80 to qualify for MIL-Standard 810F shock, vibration, and dust resistance. Glyph also backs this up with its 3-2-1 warranty: three years of hardware coverage, including cables. Two years of Level-1 data recovery, and one year of advanced replacement.

What’s more, the EX80 doesn't just protect against hardware damage and data loss: it can even help you locate a lost or stolen drive. Thanks to built-in mobile device location tracking, it's possible to track and find the drive using native Apple and Android tracking software. Another handy feature is MagSafe compatibility with iPhones, or the magnetic mounting system will attach to any ferrous metal surface.

The Atom EX80 is available to pre-order, with availability expected from June 19th. Capacities include 1TB, 2TB, 4TB and 8TB, priced at $499.99/£393, $699.99/£550, $1099.99/£863 and $2199.99/£1726, respectively.

Pre-order now from B&H

In a world where every other tech news story seems to be about the rising price of flash memory, then you’ll probably know that portable SSDs now cost a fortune. But there is a possible solution: an SSD enclosure. This is simply the casing and USB electronics of a portable SSD, minus the SSD itself. You're then free to fit a compatible SSD of your choice, which could be especially useful if you happen to already have an internal SSD that’s no longer being used.

Some enclosures can be basic USB 3 designs that could significantly bottleneck the SSD within, but not the Terramaster D1. This uses a super-fast 40Gbps Thunderbolt 5 / USB4 interface, which is capable of delivering blistering transfer speeds. Terramaster's testing with a Samsung 990 Pro SSD connected to a Mac mini M4 yielded sequential read speeds of up to 3853MB/s, and a 3707MB/s write rate. If you're not rocking a Thunderbolt 5 / USB4 machine, the D1 is also backward compatible to USB2 or Thunderbolt 3, though naturally max transfer speeds will be reduced. The drive is compatible with standard NVMe M.2 2280 SSDs up to 8TB in capacity, and requires no separate power source - the USB/Thunderbolt connection provides power.

As for the enclosure itself, that's made almost exclusively from aerospace-grade aluminium, which combined with the large cooling fins should offer excellent heat dissipation. Judging by the press photos, the color also seems to match the finish of silver Mac products rather well. On the base are anti-slip rubber feet, and the design requires no cooling fan, so operation will be silent.

Terramaster also bundles its TDAS mobile app with the D1 which provides easy photo and videos backup direct from iOS and Android devices. Alternatively, TPC Backupper software offers automated, scheduled backups for Windows systems.

The Terramaster D1 SSD enclosure is available now, priced at $89.99/£109.99.

Lexar has released special editions of three of its portable storage products. Created in partnership with the Argentine Football Association (AFA), the new Elite Legends Series of products reflects Lexar's status of official partner to the Argentine National Football Team. Consequently each product is finished in the same distinctive blue-and-white color scheme as the 2026 Argentinian national football strip. The tie-in is said to celebrate a "shared commitment to performance, resilience, and excellence under pressure".

The Elite Legends Series of special edition Lexar products is comprised of:

SL500 Portable SSD Elite Legends Series

This is a re-liveried version of Lexar's existing SL500 portable SSD. Consequently it's capable of the same rapid 2000MB/s max read and 1800MB/s peak write speeds, achieved via a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 interface. Lexar has managed to squeeze all this performance into a slim metal body just 7.8mm thick and 43g in weight. The SL500 is compatible with Windows, Mac and Android devices, and it can also be connected directly to an iPhone for use when shooting video, with native support for Apple Pro Res recording. Choose between 1TB or 2TB capacities, though right now only the former is available to buy, priced at $259.99.

Air Portable SSD Elite Legends Series

The Air is Lexar's lightest, most travel-friendly portable SSD. It tips the scales at a barely believable 19g, and is also impressively compact, measuring 50.7mm x 70.7mm x 9.3mm. Yet despite the crash diet, Lexar has somehow made the Air tough enough to survive a 2-meter drop. Transfer speeds aren't going to break any records, as the Air is 'only' rated for speeds up to 390MB/s read and 400MB/s write, but who really cares when it's now available in the eye-catching Elite Legends Series livery? One capacity option is available - 512GB - costing $149.99.

Dual Drive D500 Elite Legends Series

The third and final device in the new Elite Legends Series is a USB flash drive, rather than a portable SSD like the other two devices in the range. Again, it's a re-skin rather than a technically new product, this time being based on the existing Jump Drive Dual Drive D500. The signature feature of the Dual Drive D500 is its USB-A and USB-C connectors, positioned at each end of the drive, with a reversible cover able to rotate to protect the connector not currently in use. Expect transfer speeds of up to 400MB/s, and when used in conjunction with the Lexar App, the drive will automatically back up mobile photos, videos, and even iPhone Live Photos. Currently only a 128GB capacity priced at $54.99 is available in Elite Legends Series spec, though the regular Dual Drive D500 can also be had in 256GB, 512GB and 1TB options.

Lexar has launched a handy new USB flash drive that promises high levels of performance, convenience and versatility. The Lexar Dual Drive Portable SSD D70E plugs directly into Windows or Mac computers, as well as Android and iOS devices, including smartphones and tablets - no separate cable necessary.

To ensure maximum compatibility, the drive features a USB Type-C connector and one end, and a Type-A plug at the other, making it backward compatible with older computers. Each plug is protected by its own port cover, neatly integrated into the drive’s sleek metal housing.Connect via USB-C and the drive can operate at USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 speed, resulting in a maximum 2000MB/s read speed and 1800MB/s write speed (1300MB/s for the 512GB model). Switch over to the USB-A connector and the drive uses a USB 3.2 interface for a peak 1000MB/s read rate and 900MB/s max write speed.

The Dual Drive Portable SSD D70E measures 79.6mm x 30.2mm x 7.8mm and weighs 55g, with silver being the sole color option. Three capacity variants are available at launch: 512GB, 1TB and 2TB, priced at $119.99/£129.99, $199.99/£199.99 and $299.99/£299.99, respectively.

So whether you want to move files between old and new devices, automatically back up photos or videos via the Lexar app, or simply expand the built-in storage of your smart device; the Lexar Dual Drive Portable SSD D70E looks like a speedy yet simple solution

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.

Seagate has revealed three new storage products designed for storing serious amounts of data:

Seagate One Touch

This is a conventional desktop hard disk drive offering high capacity storage at an accessible price. Available in 8TB, 20TB, and 24TB capacities, it packs enough space for hundreds of hours of 4K video footage, all in an enclosure measuring 186.80mm/7.354in x 40.30mm/1.587in x 131.70mm/5.185in.

What's more, unlike desktop hard drives of old, the One Touch doesn't need a separate power supply; it uses a single USB-C connection for both power and data transfer, much like a portable hard drive or SSD.

You get Windows and Mac compatibility out of the box, and Seagate includes Rescue Data Recovery Services; a package of services that help protect against data loss. Transfer speeds aren't quoted, but the One Touch is built for maximum storage, not maximum speed.

Expect to pay $259.99/£209.99 for the 8TB capacity. Pricing for the 20TB and 24TB versions has yet to be disclosed.

LaCie 8big Pro5

Entrusting critical data to a single hard drive isn't advisable; much better to duplicate it across multiple drives, as should one drive fail, you'll still have a back-up copy. It's this kind of enterprise-class reliability that you get with the new LaCie 8big Pro5 (LaCie now being a sub-brand of Seagate).

This 8-bay RAID storage solution is built for creative professionals working with multi‑stream 4K/8K video, large RAW image libraries, and AI‑assisted production environments. Thunderbolt 5 connectivity enables transfer speeds of up to 2800MB/s, along with up to 140W power delivery for a laptop connected to one of the 8big Pro5's four USB-C ports. Multiple RAID set-ups are supported, so you can balance speed with data redundancy.

The LaCie 8big Pro5 is available in 32TB ($3,999), 64TB ($4,799), 128TB ($5,999), 192TB ($7,499) and 256TB ($9,499) capacities.

Seagate FireCuda X Vault

Lastly, gamers and streamers will appreciate the new Seagate FireCuda X Vault. Like the Seagate One Touch, this is also a single external hard disk drive, and it only requires one USB-C connection for data and power transfer - no separate power brick needed.

Where it differs is that this hard drive is aimed primarily at PC gamers wanting to store huge game libraries, gameplay and content footage. In keeping with the gaming ethos, the drive's exterior is visually striking and incorporates customizable RGB illumination and Windows Dynamic Lighting that "keeps your vibe in check and syncs to your rig’s energy".

Two capacities are available - 8TB and 20TB - and both come with Rescue Data Recovery Services, Xbox on PC certification, a one-month Xbox Game Pass for PC trial, and a two-month Adobe Creative Cloud Plan.

The 8TB FireCuda X Vault costs $270, and the 20TB version is $530.

A number of portable hard drives have aimed to offer creators the ability to back up photos and videos on site, but PixelMob is a new portable device that doesn’t just back up photos and videos. PixelMob is a hard drive with a built-in screen that doubles as a portable HDMI monitor, automates processes like HDR and focus stacking, and even culls and color grades photos on site.

The UnifyDrive PixelMob, unveiled over the weekend at the NAB Show, is at its core a NVMe SSD storage drive with a built-in touchscreen and memory card slots. That combination allows creators to create backup files on-site.

UnifyDrive says those backups have six layers of security, including a downloadable backup report that creators can send to commercial clients if needed. The company says those six layers include a streaming checksum verification while the files transfer, write-after-read on-disk integrity checks, RAID 1 mirroring, continuous SMART health monitoring, synchronous dual-location writes, and AES-256 encrypted cloud backup.

While backups may be the primary purpose of the PixelMob, that’s not the only feature built into the gadget. The drive uses on-board AI to cull photos – or choose the best ones – on site. Creators can use the screen to swipe left to toss it or swipe right to flag it as a keeper.

Culling isn’t the only feature powered by on-device AI. The company says the gadget will also power voice-controlled color-grading for photos on the device itself, which will export as XMP files that are supported by programs like Lightroom and Capture One.

The PixelMob is also compatible with camera tethering. Beyond placing files immediately on the drive, using a wired tether allows the PixelMob to automate focus stacking and HDR processing. The company says it can also be used to create time-lapses, stack star trails, and work with auto exposure bracketing.

The PixelMob also has a Wi-Fi Hotspot built-in that allows for sharing photos without downloading a dedicated app. Recipients scan a QR code to receive batch transfers connected to the drive itself rather than an internet connection.

The PixelMob will have two variants, one a smaller 5.5” screen with an eight-hour battery, and a larger 7” screen that also adds CFExpress Type B support and up to 10 hours of battery life.

The concept of a portable hard drive with a built-in card slot and screen for on-site backups isn’t new – and some earlier attempts at similar on-site drives have had limited success, like the LaCie Rugged BOSS and the Gnarbox, both of which are no longer available.

But, PixelMob is trying to be more than just a backup solution. There’s one missing piece in the announcement, however. UnifyDrive hasn’t yet shared the price for the PixelMob, nor a launch date, though an email sign-up list is open on the device’s website. The photos of the prototype drive and specs are subject to change.

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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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Novelty USB sticks are nothing new - I for instance own a flash drive shaped like an Olaf snowman, and one that looks like a miniature Fujifilm XT-1. But if you want a truly eye-catching means of keeping your images or videos mobile, SanDisk's Crayola USB-C Flash Drive takes some beating.

Designed to emulate Crayola's classic chunky wax crayons, the 81.79mm x 15.75mm x 17mm drive can be had in four vivid color options: Mango Tango, Cerulean Blue, Electric Lime and Vivid Violet. Slide off the pointy end cap and a USB-C connector is revealed, then insert into your laptop or tablet and enjoy the admiring glances you'll get from onlookers next time you're working/posing in your local coffee shop.

But while the Crayola USB-C Flash Drive may look the part, it's not going to be the fastest flash drive in town. It uses a relatively slow USB 3.2 Gen 1 interface, which has a theoretical 625MB/s max speed, though real-world read/write rates are likely to top out at more like 450MB/s. SanDisk doesn't advertise speed numbers for the drive either, which isn't especially encouraging. But while you wait for files to transfer, you (or more likely, your kids) can at least enjoy a 3-month subscription to the Crayola Create & Play app, as well as Crayola Thinking Sheets — interactive activities "designed to spark creativity, confidence, and self-expression".

The SanDisk Crayola USB-C Flash Drive is available to buy now and comes in three capacities: 64GB ($25.99/£22.99), 128GB ($34.99/£30.99), and 256GB ($52.99/£46.99).

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.

World Backup Day always arrives as a timely reminder that our digital lives are only as safe as the storage we trust them to.

For photographers, filmmakers, and anyone capturing life’s moments, the stakes are even higher.

The reality is simple: if your work matters, backing it up properly matters even more. Whether you’re shooting professionally or documenting family life, a solid backup strategy built around dependable drives ensures your content is protected, accessible, and ready when you need it.

With World Backup Day deals now live at B&H, there’s never been a better moment to invest in storage that gives you peace of mind – particularly at a time when the price of memory continues to shoot upwards.

World Backup Day isn’t just another date on the calendar; it’s a reminder to take your data seriously. With deals like these, there’s no excuse to leave your images and videos vulnerable.

Invest in the right storage now, and you’re not just buying a drive, you’re protecting your work, your memories, and everything you’ve created.

Do also check out our guide to the best portable hard drives and SSDs or our guide to the best hard drives for video editing

I have just purchased my third 2TB hard drive, there are over 44,000 images on my Google Photos account, and I have 10 rolls of film waiting to be developed. Even as a content creator/photographer, I’m starting to think that we are all taking too many photos.

Every day, around 5.3 billion photos are taken, that’s 61,000 per second. There isn’t an event that isn’t photographed, whether it's the big ones, weddings, birthdays, holidays, etc., or the small, mundane happenings that no longer go uncaptured, funny graffiti on the back of a toilet door, what you ate for lunch, or a cute dog you pass on the street.

We reach for our phones so instinctively, we rarely stop to consider the elements that once defined a good photograph - lighting, composition, even where the image will end up. Once upon a time, when film cameras ruled and photography felt more precious, photos would end up in albums, meticulously documented and manually stuck into pages so they could be looked at and loved for years to come.

There was romance in the tactile world of physical photography, a kind of magic born from the hours spent shooting, developing, and curating. But digital photography rarely allows for this sort of intimacy; nowadays, a select few might make it to ‘the gram’, but the majority languish on phones, in the cloud, or stored on hard drives, never to be looked at or thought about again.

A big reason we take so many photos is that it’s easy. When someone asks you to take a photo, you take several in the hopes that one of them is ok. And if it isn’t, you do it all again. Camera reels are no longer individual snapshots into someone's life, but a series of burst photos from a single moment. All taken in the quest for perfection, and it makes you wonder, are we living for the photo or the moment?

In the last few years, we’ve seen more nightclubs decide to ban phones from the dancefloor, a refreshing movement that signifies undocumented experiences are still sought after. These sacred phone-free spaces are a welcome break from the endless demands of social media posting. After all, if social media didn’t exist, we surely wouldn’t be taking quite as many photos.

I remember travelling through Southeast Asia, feeling incensed by the number of cameras, phones, and drones I encountered at every beautiful landmark. Hordes of people waited in queues to take the same photo that so many people before and after them had taken. I thought, how boring. But, should I wait too? Would I regret not having the postcard-perfect picture of me in front of the temples of Angkor Wat or the famous Maya Bay (the one used in DiCaprio’s 2001 film, The Beach)? And the sad but honest answer is yes, I probably would’ve done.

Of course, we want to document our lives; we want to be able to show people the places we’ve been and the things we’ve seen, but there is something beautiful about the moments we only capture with our eyes. Those memories are just for you!

Perhaps if I can take my own advice, I won’t have to buy a fourth 2TB hard drive anytime soon.

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!

AWS, Amazon's cloud computing business that powers around at third of the internet, announced last week that three of its facilities in the UAE and Bahrain were knocked out by drone strikes.

The strikes, a result of the US/Israel-led action against Iran, were initially described as the facilities being hit by 'objects' before a little more clarity emerged.

So what got hit, and why worry?

An AWS (Amazon Web Services) data center was hit, creating 'sparks and fire', while indirect damage in Bahrain still caused power outages. The fires were then treated ''in some cases, required fire suppression activities that resulted in additional water damage'' according to a report by the BBC.

Why worry? Well I know that some family members have experienced some slower downloads this week, though I can't say for sure these things are connected, and other people I know have had to flee the region so internet problems seem a little less significant by comparison to attempting to get out of the path of missiles and the shrapnel scattered by even successful air defence systems.

But the fact weapons were targeting these facilities says a lot about AWS's significance to the modern world (and that some perceive it as a backbone of the Western world).

AWS acts as the backbone for major platforms like Netflix, Reddit, Twitch, and LinkedIn, meaning a significant amount of daily web traffic passes through its servers. It is estimated that they hold a total of 500 trillion files, in the order of 2 zetabytes.

That means that the cloud storage server you use to store your files – your photos and videos – might well just be a 'front' for AWS systems, that they buy and use as and when they need them.

Amongst the big names that use AWS for data storage are:

• Adobe Creative Cloud
• Dropbox (though most is on its own infrastructure)
• SmugMug
• Apple (though it also has many of its own data centers)
• NordLocker

Even companies that prefer to rely on their own infrastructure where possible tend to be, well, big. Google Cloud Platform – the equivalent system that Google use – would also seem a logical target to anyone shooting at

All of that is to say that there is still a lot to be said to being the master of your own data, especially at the moment.

But there are backups, right?

AWS do not publicly share the exact details, but estimates suggest that there are around 900 centers worldwide. Each center will have its own multiple backups (but of course all a vulnerable at once in an event like a missile strike).

Systems divide these into zones – a big city like London might have three – and each piece of data is automatically copied into at least three zones, so three places, to protect against a catastrophic failure.

Worldwide companies might get extra copies by having more than one location, each getting the three copies.

The upshot is that data gets around 99.999999999% (famously called 11 nines) durability, and the system can even self heal if multiple centers fail simultaneously, automatically copying fragments to remaining centers. Losing an entire zone is a difficult situation though, and data can take minutes or hours to rebuild as data is shunted around the world.

So perhaps I should store some of my own data?

There is always a lot ot be said for having some of the best SSDs and the best external hard disks for local storage – they are much faster for immediate working too.

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

SanDisk has refreshed its core range of portable SSDs. The new line-up is split into three tiers - Extreme Pro Portable, Extreme Portable and plain Portable…

SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD

The top-of-the-range, fastest drives are called SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD. They offer blisteringly fast transfer speeds of up to 4000MB/s read and 3800MB/s write, making it possible to move 10 minutes of 12K footage in under 60 seconds. This makes it not just faster than any previous SanDisk portable SSD, but also quicker than anything in the current SanDisk Professional range.

We assume this means the new Extreme PRO drives are using a USB4 interface, as anything less would bottleneck those advertised speeds, but as yet SanDisk has not revealed the USB version it's using here. Capacity options include 2TB, 4TB and 8TB variants. All are IP65-rated to resist water and dust ingress, and are claimed to withstand a 3-meter drop. Expect retail availability and pricing details in the second half of 2026.

SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD

SanDisk's mid-range portable SSD offering is the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD (non Pro). This is still capable of a rapid 2000MB/s read speed, and it features the same IP65 ingress protection and 3-meter drop resistance as its Pro sibling. It should also fit into most pockets, thanks to its svelte 3.35" x 2" x 0.39" dimensions. 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities are available to buy now, priced at $259.99/£220.99, $459.99/£387.99 and a whopping $919.99/£770.99, respectively. A 500GB option is also slated for release later this year.

SanDisk Portable SSD

The entry-level model in the new SSD line-up is called simply SanDisk Portable SSD. This is aimed more at casual users - students, office workers, etc - and is said to "provide reliable, portable storage for everyday digital content". Speeds are quoted at up to 1000MB/s, via a USB 3.2 Gen 2 connection. Though this more basic drive doesn't come with an IP rating, it is advertised as having drop protection from up to 2 meter heights. As with the range-topping Extreme Pro drives, availability is scheduled for the second half of 2026, with 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities expected.

Keen students of the SanDisk product portfolio may recognise these product names from past portable SSDs. Rather confusingly, SanDisk re-uses the same naming system for multiple generations of its portable SSDs. To differentiate the latest offerings, look out for a 'V3' suffix at the end of the product name. The most obvious visual differentiator is the switch to the new SanDisk logo design for the V3 SSDs, and their red keychain loop has also been subtly reshaped.

AI doesn't just want to generate images; it wants your storage, too, as two hard drive manufacturers have announced they’ve already sold out for 2026, just two months into the year.

Both Western Digital and Seagate Technology – two of the manufacturers dominating the hard disk drive (HDD) market globally – made the announcements earlier this month during Q2 company earnings calls.

Speaking on their respective calls, CEO of Western Digital, Tiang Yew Tan said: “We’re pretty much sold out for calendar year 2026,” and Seagate CEO William Mosley shared: “Our nearline capacity is fully allocated through calendar year 2026.”

To clarify, the ‘sellout’ doesn't mean you can’t go and buy a portable hard drive to store your photos on; currently, these are very much still in stock at retailers for consumers.

But what it does mean is that, thanks to the rapid expansion of AI and cloud-based services needing vast amounts of data storage hardware, manufacturers have already maxed out their ability to produce more hard drives this year.

Going forward, Seagate Technology and Western Digital are unlikely to prioritize consumer demand, which could mean that HDDs and solid-state drives (SSDs) become scarce in the near future.

In fact, both manufacturers have made it clear that their sights are firmly set on reaping the rewards of serving the AI overlords.

Tan said: “We also have in place robust commercial agreements with three of our top five customers, two through calendar year 2027 and one through calendar year 2028."

While Mosley explained, "Further out, demand visibility is strengthening based on the long-term agreements in place with major cloud customers through calendar 2027.”

AI is also behind the shortage of global random access memory (RAM), creating a knock-on effect that’s driving up prices of hard drives. RAM is an essential component of AI infrastructure, needed to process massive amounts of data, and manufacturers are reallocating capacity towards higher-margin enterprise clients.

While Seagate Technology and Western Digital – two of the three leading hard drive manufacturers – have announced sellouts, Toshiba, the third major player, has been quiet.

The company is no longer listed on the stock exchange, meaning only basic financial information is publicly available, and it doesn't provide long-term outlooks like its competitors.

But there may be hope for consumers in SanDisk. A well-known storage brand, the former subsidiary of Western Digital, officially broke away from its parent company in 2025 and, as yet, hasn't announced reaching manufacturing capacity. In fact, my colleague, Paul Hatton, highly rates the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD V2.

For photographers, the news is further proof of the growing expense of hard drives in the age of AI. Along with the increasing price of hard drives, memory cards have gone up in cost in 2026 as well.

So, like a fox that's broken into a turkey pen, it seems like AI is set to snatch and grab as much hard drive capacity as possible. Perhaps you and I should get our hands on some extra storage before our next big shoots.

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Read our reviews of the Lexar SL500 and PNY EliteX-PRO SSD, two top-tier portable storage devices.

If you want a large amount of portable storage capacity for the minimum possible price, then a portable hard disk drive is the obvious choice. These are noticeably cheaper than a portable SSD (solid state drive) of an equivalent capacity, yet are just as convenient, with no separate power supply required. The Toshiba Canvio Flex is a portable hard disk drive available in 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities. It's designed to be compatible with a range of devices, including Windows and Mac computers, as well as iOS and Android mobile devices. Consequently you're able to use the drive to back up files directly from your phone - no separate computer required.

Pricing

At around £85 for the 2TB version, the Canvio Flex is priced in line with the equivalent competition from Western Digital and Seagate. The 1TB capacity is cheaper at around £68, but the 2TB is clearly better value, with a lower cost per gigabyte of storage. The 4TB option has an even cheaper price per gigabyte, but it's a physically thicker and heavier drive, making the 2TB version the price:portability sweet spot.

Build & handling

The Canvio Flex is basic but sleek design. The satin 'metal' top panel is actually plastic, as is the bottom, but the fit and finish is good and there's only minor flexing if you squeeze the top and bottom together. The plastic exterior also helps to keep the drive's weight down, although at 155g for out 2 terabyte review sample, this is still noticeably heavier than a portable SSD of the same capacity. That's inevitable though, as inside is a 2.5-inch mechanical hard disk drive with complex moving parts, rather than just some solid state memory chips as you'd find in an SSD. That said, it's a long way from being heavy. Go for the range-topping 4TB version and weight jumps to 212g, and thickness increases from 14.3mm to a rather hefty 19.5mm, but that's because 2.5-inch hard drives larger than 2TB need more physical data platters, which stacked together increase the thickness of the drive.

Arguably the most noteworthy thing about the Canvio Flex's exterior is its USB connection. Rather than an almost-ubiquitous USB-C socket, Toshiba has selected what's officially called a 'USB Micro-B SuperSpeed' connection. This pre-dates USB-C, and was designed to be a faster revision of the old (and more common) Micro-B connector type, able to support USB 3.0 transfer speeds. It's an obvious indicator of the somewhat dated technology Toshiba is using here, but this is far from the only portable hard disk drive to still make use of this USB connector, and does it really matter? With a maximum data speed of 5Gbit/s, it's still more than fast enough to let the hard drive run at its fastest. Toshiba includes two cables with the drive - a USB-C, and a USB-A - so the drive can be used with any current computer or phone, so there should be no connection or compatibility issues. The only potential drawback with using this rarer version of USB socket is if you do happen to lose one of the supplied cables, you'll be unlikely to have a spare lying around (though replacements are still readily available to buy).

Performance

Unlike portable SSDs, where manufacturers often put their maximum speed potential front and center, Toshiba's product page for the Canvio flex doesn't list the maximum read or write speed anywhere. The only mention of the device's performance in the specs is "max. transfer rate", which is rather cheekily quoted as ~5.0 Gbit/s. This is the theoretical maximum speed of the USB connection, not the speed of the actual hard disk drive behind the USB interface, which will be far slower. To find out how much slower, I broke out my usual storage benchmarking software, CrystalDiskMark. I tested the Canvio Flex using a fast Windows laptop with a USB4 connection - this offers enough bandwidth to comfortably max out the speed of the portable hard drive, ensuring no testing bottlenecks.

A maximum read speed of almost 150MB/s and an even faster 156MB/s write speed is actually very respectable for a budget portable hard drive. Obviously it's nowhere near what an SSD could achieve, but unless you're transferring hundreds of gigabytes of data on a daily basis, the Canvio Flex's speed should be quick enough for most. Around 20 years ago I owned what was then the fastest consumer (internal) hard drive money could buy - a 74GB Western Digital Raptor, which spun at a blistering 10,000rpm - yet that was actually slower than the little Canvio Flex. The good old mechanical hard disk drive has come a long way, even if SSDs have stolen all the limelight.

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

When transferring a single large video file, the Canvio Flex performs almost as well as in benchmarking software, which is very impressive. Where its hard drive innards struggle is with multiple small files, dropping to just 58MB/s write speed, though read speed reached an more brisk 91.31MB/s average, peaking at 127MB/s.

Verdict

Conventional portable hard disk drives have long been a compelling value alternative to an SSD for anyone wanting the cheapest possible price per gigabyte of portable storage. The Toshiba Canvio Flex is a prime example. Performance, though undeniably slower than an SSD, is actually pretty decent: it's fast enough for casual users who aren't shifting large amounts of data on a daily basis, and at no time was I ever frustrated by its relative lack of speed compared to an SSD.

Really there's only one problem here, and it's an existential issue that affects all portable hard disk drives. A few years ago portable SSDs used to be three or four times more expensive per gigabyte than an equivalent portable hard disk drive, but now the price gap has closed significantly. Today an entry-level 2TB portable SSD like the WD Elements SE will set you back around £130 - just £45 more than the Canvio Flex. It's far from the quickest portable SSD, but even its relatively modest 400MB/s max speed is way beyond what any portable hard disk drive can muster.

If you're on a tight budget, then the Canvio Flex is definitely worth shortlisting. Its build quality and performance won't disappoint, and though its USB micro-B connection may seem dated, it has little practical disadvantage. However, with the price gap between portable hard drives and SSDs continuing to close, the days of the traditional hard disk drive are numbered.

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.

After teasing its new TouchLock Portable SSD at the 2026 CES trade show, Lexar has officially launched this new portable SSD with next-generation security features.

The TouchLock's signature feature is its dual-layer security system. This combines one-touch NFC authentication with 128-bit AES hardware encryption. Using a smartphone as the key, you can tap to unlock the drive, only after which will it become visible to the host device and the drive's contents de-encrypted. This contact-free method of unlocking eliminates any need for remembering a password or code.

Lexar has also designed the TouchLock to be MagSafe-compatible. It'll snap securely to an iPhone, conveniently supplementing its internal storage when shooting video. The slimline exterior ensures the drive will slip easily into any kit bag, yet this is still a tough device, capable of withstanding drops from up to 2 meters.

The TouchLock Portable SSD is rated at 450MB/s read and 420MB/s write speeds. It will be available in 512GB and 1TB capacities, priced at $84.99/£59.99 and $139.99/£99.99, respectively. A 2TB version is also said to be on the way.

Lexar Professional Go Portable SSD with Hub

The Lexar Professional Go has been available for around a year now, but it lines up alongside the TouchLock as another compelling portable SSD option for iPhone cinematography and videography.

At roughly the size of a thumb, the Go Portable SSD is considerably smaller than most portable SSDs, yet it still offers 1TB or 2TB of capacity, while also matching the thickness of recent iPhone Pro models. It supports direct external recording of Apple ProRes video when connected to iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 15 Pro Max, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max.

Transfer speeds are rated at up to 1050MB/s read and up to 1000MB/s write, via a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface. This ensures smooth 4K 60fps recording, or fast backups of important media. A custom USB Type-C connector with increased plugging force has been implemented to maintain a more stable cable connection during handheld shooting and mobile use.

Then there's the Professional Go standout feature: the included hub. When the SSD is connected to an iPhone's USB port, it thereby prevents the use of additional accessories. The hub expands connectivity with multiple USB Type-C ports, allowing simultaneous connection of microphones, lighting, power sources, gimbals, and cages, all in a streamlined, cable-free solution.

The Professional Go Portable SSD is also boasts IP65 dust and water resistance, along with the ability to operate across a wide temperature range.

The Lexar Professional Go Portable SSD with Hub is available to buy now, priced at $199.99/£139.99 for the 1TB capacity and $299.99/£269.99 for the top 2TB model.

Check out my guide to the best portable SSDs

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.

If you've got some cash ready to invest, right now storage companies seem like a tempting option. In the last 12 months the share prices of SanDisk, Western Digital and Seagate Technology have all soared, with SanDisk recording a huge 822.11% growth during this period. Even since the start of 2026 SanDisk's stock price has risen 44.21%, likely helped by increased tech exposure from this year's CES.

But what could be causing this stratospheric rise in fortune for the big memory manufacturers? Well, it's our old friend AI, of course. 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.

We've already seen forecasts that camera phone prices could rise this year, as manufacturers of such consumer electronics 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. Prograde Digital has also reported that it's set to significantly hike prices of its memory cards in Japan, due to the same memory cost increases caused by AI infrastructure development. Prograde's memory cards expected to rise by anywhere between 3.2% and as much as 123%, depending on the particular card in question.

Story credit: Digital Camera Life (translated from Japansese)

There are plenty of fast portable SSDs out there, with the quicker ones offering transfer speeds of around 2000MB/s. But OWC's latest Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSD blows the competition into the weeds!

Thanks to it's bang-up-to-date 80Gbps Thunderbolt 5 interface, it's capable of read speeds in excess of 6000MB/s - that's three times faster than even a quick USB portable SSD. It achieves this performance with no separate power supply - everything's handled over just a single built-in Thunderbolt cable.

To extract the maximum speed of the drive, you will need a Thunderbolt 5 computer. These are still relatively rare, limited to very high-end laptop PCs, along with Apple M4 Pro- and Pro Max-based MacBooks. Thankfully, the Envoy Ultra can also be used with a much wider selection of PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, iPad Pro and Surface products, as it's backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, and USB4 computers, though transfer speeds will of course be bottlenecked by their slower interfaces.

At 5.1x3x0.8" (13x7.5x2cm) and 12oz (341g), the Envoy Ultra isn't the smallest or lightest portable SSD out there, but neither is it inconveniently bulky. It's also IP67 dust and water-resistant to 3.3' (1m), while also being crush-resistant. Despite its incredible speed, the drive's aluminium chassis can dissipate heat without the need for a cooling fan, so the Envoy Ultra operates in complete silence.

The OWC Envoy Ultra Thunderbolt 5 SSD is available in 2TB and 4TB capacities, and OWC has just launched a new 8TB version for the ultimate in portable SSD speed AND capacity. Naturally, you'll pay a hefty premium to be at the forefront of portable storage, as the 8TB model is priced at a whopping $1,699.99. The 4TB version can be had for a slightly less eye-watering $899.99, while the 2TB capacity costs $549.99.

Buy now from B&H

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.