Atomos would consider switching from SSD drives to the newly-released CFexpress memory cards in the future - according to Atomos CEO Jeromy Young. Speaking to DCW at IBC 2019, the attraction of the new memory format would be to make the successor to products like the best-selling Ninja V that much smaller.
"We're right behind that technology, as it comes down in price we will offer it in our products," says Young, speaking to us in an exclusive interview about ProRes RAW.
But they are sticking with SSD at the moment, because it is a cheaper way of achieving the high data read/write rates needed to record and playback video at the highest resolution and quality. But as CFexpress is so much smaller than the miniSSD drives that Atomos currently uses with its devices, Young is excited about using CFexpress to create units with a smaller form factor - once the price of CFexpress comes down.
CFexpress cards are smaller and faster than SSDs
Currently Sandisk and Angelbird are the two card makers to have launched CFexpress cards. SanDisk's and Angelbird's Type B CFExpress cards offer read speeds of up to 1700MB/s and 1400MB/s write speeds. Angelbird’s AtomX SSDmini designed for Atomos monitor/recorders, by comparison, offers read speeds of 540 MB/s and write speeds of 500 MB/s.
We are committed to miniaturization of our products, we're committed to increased performance," says Young. And in that spirit, he also revealed that Atomos is considering a separate video recorder that would be "a small Ninja, without a screen. Kinda click into your camera, you know like the battery packs do".
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