I have done my fair share of memory and general benchmarks in the past, so when ProGrade asked if I wanted to test out their new V90 SD Cards, I was more than happy to put them through their paces and see how they perform against the current competition on the market.
“Who are ProGrade?” you might be asking yourself.
Yes, they are certainly the new kids on the block, going head to head with the big hitters of the industry, such as Sony and SanDisk. Although, behind the scenes, the people behind ProGrade have a long line of heritage that runs deep with experienced technicians in the flash storage industry. These veterans have now set out to create their own company, wanting to do things slightly differently.
ProGrade History
When it comes to the Flash Storage industry, Wes Brewer had seen just about been there and seen it all. While working at Sandisk for 10 year, Wes was hugely involved in the development of the current and very popular Sandisk Ultra and Extreme series SD cards.
Following his time at Sandisk, Wes did some freelance consulting and eventually himself at Micron, where he got involved in the management of a high quality, yet very little known brand (at the time) called Lexar.
Here Wes built a new team that did great things, ultimately bringing the Lexar products to the mainstream, where they quickly became a very popular brand in the work of photographers and videographers.
Micron unfortunately sold Lexar to a Chinese company called Long System China. LSC bought Lexar, as it was a well established and quality product, although didn’t have the intention of continuing its innovation goals, but rather to sell, its already foundational storage products to the Chinese market.
This resulted in many original skilled US employees, leaving the company in late 2017, one of them being Wes.
Wes however, had bigger dreams and visions for the industry, wanting to do things differently, especially after witnessing the sellout of Lexar.
With the change in ownership of Lexar as well as Sandisk being bought out by Western Digital in 2017 (allowing WD to enter the flash storage market), Wes saw that the was both instability and a gaping hole in the market, of which professional creatives weren’t able to get quality flash memory products online, while also suffering from a lack of professional aftermarket, customer service.
Wes wanted to fix this with his vision for ProGrade Digital, by positioning themselves firmly within the digital flash industry, as a brand that the serious enthusiasts and professionals want to use in their everyday hobbyist or commercial photography or videography work.
Now that we know where the ProGrade company and it’s experience in the flash storage industry stems from, let’s have a look at what products they offer us as creatives.
He decided to leave the days of being an employee behind him, by taking a small team of his best technicians and utilizing his decades of knowledge in the industry, Wes set out to head up his own flash storage company, becoming executive CEO of Prograde Digital, opening their doors in February 2018.
ProGrade Product Range
As ProGrade only started operations in 2018, their product range is small but powerful. They currently have two SD Card tiers available, being the V60 UHS-II and V90 UHS-II SD cards, as well CFast 2.0 Cards, followed by their Micro SD Cards.
Beyond their flash storage cards, they also offer two USB 3.1 Gen2 Dual Slot Card Readers. The first being the UHS-II SD and CFast Card Reader (Price not available) and the second being the Dual Micro SD Card Reader ($79.99).
They also have the new, ultra fast and highly anticipated CFexpress coming up in the near future, which is the reason they have skipped XQD cards altogether in favour of this superior technology.
XQD is found in the new Nikon Z6 ($980.00) and Nikon Z7 ($1,499.99) mirrorless cameras, and is in fact backward compatible with CFexpress, allowing future driver updates to the Nikon cameras to work with CFexpress cards as well.
There is more information about on CFexpress further down, in this article.
While their range might not be as extensive as Sandisk, I actually like that fact, as they deliver products that only target enthusiasts and professionals, thereby eliminating the slower, entry level storage cards, that simply won’t make the cut for a professional’s needs.
This makes buying a much simpler task, as you can be assured you are getting a high end product, no matter which product on their range you are buying.
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ProGrade V60 UHS-II SD Cards
The gold labeled V60 UHS-II SD cards are designed for serious hobbyist and enthusiasts photographers and videographers.
The V60 on the label is an assurance that your write speeds will never fall below 60MB/s (MegaBYTES per second) when recording video (V).
This is very important for recording video to the SD Card, because if your video bitrate is more than what the SD Card can handle, you will have dropped frames (black sections) in your video, which no one wants.
While this V Rating is meant to help the video market, it also carries over to the stills photography side as well, meaning that you can rest assured that when shooting single RAW files below 60MB, they will be written directly to the SD card without the need for them to go to your camera buffer (temporary storage) first.
Let’s use the Nikon D850 camera ($2,496.95) RAW files as an example case, as it shoots the following file sizes:
- JPEG Fine (Large) (22MB)
- NEF (RAW), Compressed, 12-bit (34.2 MB)
- NEF (RAW), Compressed, 14-bit (43.8MB)
- NEF (RAW), Lossless compressed, 12-bit (41.5MB)
- NEF (RAW), Lossless compressed, 14-bit (51.5MB)
- NEF (RAW), Uncompressed, 12-bit (70.3MB)
- NEF (RAW), Uncompressed, 14-bit (92MB)
As I have mine set to NEF (RAW), Lossless compressed, 14-bit files, I’ll use it as an example.
These files are 51.5MB in size, they are well below the 60MB minimum that the ProGrade V60 SD Card can write, thus the files will be easily be written directly to the camera without requiring the buffer, when shooting.
However, when shooting in the D850’s burst photo mode of 7fps (frames per second), the camera is outputting 7 files at 51.5MB each, every second, which equals 360.5MB of data per second (7fps x 51.5MB = 360.5MB/s).
This naturally far exceeds the 60MB/s of the card, thus the D850’s internal camera buffer is required to store the images temporarily, while they are being written to the SD Card.
Although, the 60MB/s is only a minimum, as the ProGarde V60 card actually markets maximum speeds of 80MB/s, which is 33% more than the minimum rating. This is however a maximum rating, as in real life shooting scenarios, you will only achieve about 75MB/s.
Going back to our Nikon D850’s RAW formats, we can rest assured knowing that even when shooting NEF (RAW), Uncompressed, 12-bit with file sizes of 70.3MB, the images will be written directly to the ProGrade V60 SD card, as long as we are shooting no faster than 1 frame per second.
This won’t be a problem in any single shot shooting scenario. Again, if shooting burst mode, this won’t be achievable and the buffer will again be required to help.
The ProGrade V60 SD Cards come in three sizes, as follows:
- ProGrade V60 UHS-II SDXC 64MB SD Card (Price not available) on Amazon
- ProGrade V60 UHS-II SDXC 128MB SD Card (Price not available) on Amazon
- ProGrade V60 UHS-II SDXC 256MB SD Card (Price not available) on Amazon
Check out my list of the best V60 SD Cards on Amazon here.
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ProGrade V90 UHS-II SD Cards
The platinum labeled V90 SD cards, are ProGrade’s top of the range, UHS-II SD cards which have a minimum Video rating (V) of 90MB/s. As with the V60, this assures you that your bitrates will never fall below the minimum of 90MB/s, which is a 50% increase over the 60MB/s minimum.
For videographers, the 90MB/s allows us to shoot at least ProRes 4:2:2 30p footage (74MB/s) with a ProGrade SD Card without any worry of dropped frames.
However, as with the V60 cards, this is just a minimum write speed, as the maximum write speed is in fact more than double that at 200MB/s, allowing us to actually shoot all the way up to near RAW quality, ProRes 4:4:4:4 30p footage, as it only requires a bitrate of 166MB/s.
In my speed test below, I did in fact find that the ProGrade V90 64GB card as able to achieve 242MB/s which is far higher than their advertised 200MB/s maximum.
For still burst photography, the extra speed from the V90 cards over the slower V60 cards really helps for burst shooting frame buffer.
Using our Nikon D850 RAW image files of NEF (RAW), Lossless compressed, 14-bit (51.5MB) again, let’s see how a V90 card will benefit us. At 7fps, we require a total of 360MB/s (7fps x 51.5MB = 360.5MB/s) write speed on our SD Card to negate our camera using the buffer.
At 242MB/s tested speeds, we unfortunately fall short of the 360MB/s goal, but not by too much. With 242MB/s at our disposal, we are able to write 4.7 NEF (RAW), Lossless compressed, 14-bit images per second, before the buffer is required (242 MB/s ÷ 51.5MB = 4.7).
Not bad and certainly much better than the 1.45 images per second using a V60 card.
This increase in write speeds will also vastly speed up your buffer clearing times, allowing it to be ready for the next batch, far quicker than when using a V60 SD Card.
Thus, it’s a very good idea to purchase a V90 SD card if you are an avid wildlife or sports photographer, as the V60 cards will just be slowing you down.
The ProGrade V90 SD Card range, comes in the following sizes:
- ProGrade V90 64MB SD Card (Price not available) on Amazon
- ProGrade V90 128MB SD Card (Price not available) on Amazon
- ProGrade V90 256MB SD Card (Price not available) on Amazon
Check out my list of the best V90 SD Cards on Amazon here.
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What is the best SD Card Size?
The memory card size (capacity) you need will depend on what type of photography or videography you are shooting. Stills photographers will require far smaller capacities than videographers, while wildlife photographers will generally need bigger capacities than landscape photographers.
While there is not set rule, its best to buy the biggest capacity card that you can afford.
While my examples below are using Sd Cards as an example, this pertains to all other types of store technologies covered further in this article.
For photo shooters, you can easily get away with a 64MB card when shooting NEF (RAW), Lossless compressed, 14-bit (51.5MB) as you will be able to store about 589 images per 64GB SD Card.
If you are wanting to shoot NEF (RAW), Uncompressed, 14-bit (92MB) images, then you will be able to store 589 images per 64GB SD Card, in which case you might want to rather opt for the ProGrade V60 UHS-II 128MB SD Card instead, to make sure you don’t run out of space, especially as a wedding, wildlife, sports or travel photographer.
Video shooters need much more storage capacity than stills shooters, so I would recommend starting with no smaller than the ProGrade V60 UHS-II 128MB SD Card, giving you 42mins of shooting time while shooting at 400Mb/s (50MB/s) on the Panasonic GH5 ($1,599.99).
I would however highly recommend buying the ProGrade V60 UHS-II 256MB SD Card instead, so that you can at least get over an hour (84mins) of shooting time per card with the GH5 10bit HDR 400mbps bitrate.
NOTE: While on paper the V60 version is fine for the GH5 at 400mb/s, I would recommend the V90 instead to make sure you don’t have any dropped frames.
If you are shooting video on a camera with only 100mbps (12.5MB/s), such as the as the Sony A7 III ($1,698.00) on Amazon, then you can get away with a ProGrade V60 UHS-II 64MB SD Card, which will give you about 85mins (1h25mins) of shooting time.
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ProGrade CFast 2.0 vs XQD Memory
Beyond the SD Cards, ProGrade Digital also make a range of three CFast 2.0 Memory cards. Many cameras support CFast 2.0, again the Nikon D850 being one of them.
CFast 2.0 is a flash storage technology that uses the SATA 3.0 bus speed, with a maximum of 600MB/s, thereby positioning itself slightly faster than the current XQD 1.0 technology, which uses PCIe 2.0 x1 bus speeds, with a maximum of 500MB/s.
Beyond the SD Cards, ProGrade Digital also make a range of three CFast 2.0 Memory cards. Many cameras support CFast 2.0, again the Nikon D850 being one of them.
CFast 2.0 is a flash storage technology that uses the SATA 3.0 bus speed, with a maximum of 600MB/s, thereby positioning itself slightly faster than the current XQD 1.0 technology, which uses PCIe 2.0 x1 bus speeds, with a maximum of 500MB/s.
For example:
- The Sony 120GB XQD card (Price not available), has a maximum write speed of 400MB/s (3200Mb/s)
- While the ProGrade CFast 2.0 128GB card (Price not available), has a maximum write speed of 450MB/s (3600Mb/s).
NOTE: XQD 2.0 technology also exists, which which uses PCIe 2.0 x2 bus speeds, with a maximum of 1,000MB/s.
Although, while the Nikon Z6 ($980.00) and Nikon Z7 ($1,499.99) mirrorless cameras and the Nikon D850 ($2,496.95) and Nikon D500 ($2,069.95) DSLR cameras, as well as the Sony XQD G 256GB (Price not available) support XQD 2.0, the Sony card seems to cap out at XQD 1.0 speeds, instead of making use of its full XQD 2.0 speed potential, for some reason.
I am unsure as to why this is and will try find out more information to clarify it.
At these speeds, both the Sony XQD or ProGrade CFast 2.0 cards are quite capable of capturing ProRes 4:4:4:4 at 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) 60p, which requires 332MB/s (2652mb/s), or ProRes 4:2:2 8K UHD (7680 x 4320) 30p, which requires a bitrate of 295MB/s (2356mb/s).
The ProGrade CFast card takes a slight lead by being able to deliver a higher quality codec tier of ProRes 4:2:2 HQ at 8K UHD 30p, which requires a bitrate of 442MB/s (3536mb/s), thanks to its 450MB/s (3600Mb/s) capabilities.
Remembering that the ProGrade CFast 2.0 = 450MB/s (3600Mb/s) and the Sony XQD = 400MB/s (3200Mb/s), here is a list of resolutions and frame rates they can support using various ProRes codec tiers:
ProRes 4:2:2
- FHD 240p = 147MB/s (1,176mb/s)
- 4K UHD 120p = 295MB/s (2,356mb/s)
- 8K UHD 30p = 295MB/s (2,356mb/s)
ProRes 4:2:2 HQ
- 4K UHD 60p = 236MB/s (1,886mb/s)
- 4K UHD 120p = 442MB/s (3,536mb/s)*
- 8K UHD 30p = 442MB/s (3,536mb/s)*
ProRes 4:4:4:4
- 4K UHD 60p = 332MB/s (2,652mb/s)
ProRes 4:4:4:4 QX
- 4K UHD 30p = 249MB/s (1,989mb/s)
*Unsupported by the Sony XQD, due to its 400MB/s limit although possible with the Prograde CFast 2.0 cars, due to its higher 450MB/s limit.
With the release of the new ProRes RAW codec, we are now able to reach RAW 12-bit quality footage using far less bandwidth and thus achieve higher resolutions using the same XQD or CFast 2.0 flash storage cards.
ProRes RAW
- 4K UHD 60p = 210MB/s (1680mb/s)
- 4K UHD 120p = 420MB/s (3,359mb/s)*
- 8K UHD 30p = 420MB/s (3,359mb/s)*
ProRes RAW HQ
- 4K UHD 30p = 149MB/s (1,193mb/s)
- 4K UHD 60p = 298MB/s (2,387mb/s)
NOTE: Many cameras don’t actually support internal ProRes recording and generally you need to buy and Atomos External recorder such as the Atomos Ninja V, although with the newly released Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, this has changed. .
The BMC4KC features dual card slots of which one is a UHS-II SD Card Slot and the other is a CFast 2.0 card slot. This is a perfect match for the new ProGrade memory cards or other CFast cards on the market and cannot wait to test this out as well.
For the stills photographer, both XQD and CFast 2.0 offer ultra fast burst shooting.
New cameras such as the Nikon Z6 ($980.00) and Nikon Z7 ($1,499.99) mirrorless cameras, as well as the Nikon D500 ($2,069.95) and D5 ($1,650.00) cameras make use of XQD.
The extra 100MB/s that XQD (400MB/s) offers over the V90 cards makes, a big difference in our burst shooting and buffer performance. Even though the Nikon Z6 and Z7 cameras only come with one XQD card slot.
Using our Nikon D850 RAW image files of NEF (RAW), Lossless compressed 14-bit (51.5MB) again, let’s see how a XQD card will benefit us.
At 7fps, we require a total of 360MB/s (7fps x 51.5MB = 360.5MB/s) write speed on our SD Card to negate our camera using the buffer.
At 400MB/s maximum speeds, it equates to 7.7fps, which means we are able to totally surpass the 360MB/s goal, allowing uso shoot at full 7fps without, the camera buffer being required, as the XQD is fast enough to write the files on its own, in real time.
CFast 2.0 performs 50MB/s faster than XQD, so depending on what camera you have and its burst shooting fps as well as its file size, you should also get amazing bust shooting speeds and buffer clears.
The ProGrade CFast 2.0 memory card range are available as follows:
- ProGrade CFast 2.0 128GB Card (Price not available) on Amazon
- ProGrade CFast 2.0 256GB Card (Price not available) on Amazon
- ProGrade CFast 2.0 512GB Card (Price not available) on Amazon
Check out my list of the best CFast Memory Cards and XQD cards on Amazon here.
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ProGrade CFexpress Memory Cards
A mentioned previously, due to the similar speed performances between XQD and CFast technologies, ProGrade have elected not to pursue XQD, as they already have CFast cards on the market.
They in turn, are rather focusing their efforts on the superior CFexpress cards, which utilizes the PCIe 3.0 x2 bus technology, which has the potential to offer up to 1970MB/s speeds. The ProGrade CFexpress will offer a 1,000MB/s (8,000Mb/s) write speed and 1,400MB/s Read Speed once released.
At these speed, CFexpress will easily be able to capture ProRes 4:4:4:4 XQ at 4K UHD 60p, which requires a bitrate of 497MB/s (3,978mb/s), making it only half of what’s potentially available with CFexpress.
In fact, you will be able to capture ProRes 4:4:4:4 XQ at 4K UHD 60p, which requires a bitrate of 995MB/s (7956mb/s) using the upcoming CFexpress technology.
Being able to capture this level of quality codec and bitrate, using nothing more than an internal flash storage card, has been unheard of until now, as currently, external recorders such as the Atomos range, using SSD drive have been required to capture these speeds.
In actual fact, these SATA 3.0 SSD’s are slower at only 600Mb/s, compared to the 1000MB/s of the forthcoming CFexpress technology.
CFexpress will also certainly be a big help in capturing uncompressed 4K and 8K resolutions of today.
To give you an idea of the bitrates when shooting uncompressed RAW footage, you need require 5,304mb/s (663MB/s) when shooting Uncompressed RAW 10bit 4:2:2 at 4K 30p.
Thanks to the 1,000MB/s (8,000Mb/s) of CFexpress, we will be able to extend our options of ProRes codecs beyond the limitations of XQD and CFast with the extra resolutions and frame rates:
ProRes 4:2:2
- 4K UHD 120p = 589MB/s (4,712mb/s)
- 8K UHD 60p = 589MB/s (4,712mb/s)
ProRes 4:2:2 HQ
- 4K UHD 120p = 884MB/s (7,072mb/s)
- 8K UHD 60p = 884MB/s (7,072mb/s)
ProRes 4:4:4:4
- 8K UHD 30p = 663MB/s (5,304mb/s)
ProRes 4:4:4:4 QX
- 4K UHD 120p = 995MB/s (7,956mb/s)
- 8K UHD 30p = 995MB/s (7,956mb/s)
Again, not forgetting the the new ProRes RAW codec, which will allow even more options:
ProRes RAW
- 4K UHD 240p = 840MB/s (6,718mb/s)
- 8K UHD 60p = 840MB/s (6,718mb/s)
ProRes RAW HQ
- 4K UHD 120p = 597MB/s (4,774mb/s)
- 8K UHD 30p = 597MB/s (4,774mb/s)
As you can see, both the new speeds of CFexpress and the redesign of the ProRes RAW codec unmistakably are required, to take us to future 8K UHD 60p and 4K UHD 120p resolutions. Without both of these technologies, we will never be able to achieve this.
For example, if we had to compare the require bitrates using the current ProRes Uncompressed RAW formats, we would need:
ProRes Uncompressed 10-bit
- 4K UHD 240p = 5,304MB/s (42,432mb/s)
- 8K UHD 60p = 5,304MB/s (42,432mb/s)
Requiring a staggering 5.3GB/s (5,304MB/s) speeds in order to capture ProRes Uncompressed 10-bit, results in 531% (5.3x) higher bitrate speeds and storage requirements than the far more optimized ProRes RAW.
Even with the speeds of CFexpress, or even Samsung 970 PRO NVMe speeds of 2700MB/s, these data rates are simply to astronomical, without ProRes RAW to assist.
ProRes Uncompressed 12-bit
- 4K UHD 120p = 8,948MB/s (71,584mb/s)
- 8K UHD 30p = 8,948MB/s (71,584mb/s)
As per the above, with even higher bit rates of 8.9GB/s (8,948MB/s), this is simply unrealistic. Fortunately ProRes RAW and Blackmagic RAW are here to save the day, together with flash storage innovation from companies like ProGrade.
This is where things get very interesting for stills photographers, looking for fast burst rates, while retaining the ability to shoot large resolutions at the same time
With CFexpress at 1,000MB/s write speed, shooting the Nikon D850 RAW image files of NEF (RAW), Lossless compressed, 14-bit (51.5MB), it will be able to sustain 19.4 image per second.
This blows the current limitation of 7fps of the D850 out of the water by more than double. With the increase in bitrate from this new technology we will easily be able to achieve 20fps at around 42MPs.
That is mind blowing compared to the 24MP limitations of today.
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ProGrade Micro SD Memory Cards
Last but no least is ProGrade’s Micro SD V60 card range, with write speeds of 80MB/s (640mb/s).
Micro SD cards are used in thousands of smaller electronics and devices such as our smartphones, tablets, drones, action cameras, portable gaming devices and even GPS devices.
The ProGrade Micro SD Cards are the only ones I could find that are based off of UHS-II speed U3 technology, allowing them to perform at 80MB/s write speeds.
Their closest competitor would be the Samsung Pro+ micro SD Card ($21.99) and the Sony Micro U3 Class 10 Micro SD cards (Price not available) on Amazon.
ProGrade Digital microSDXC UHS-II memory cards are available in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB capacities later in 2018 on Amazon.
Check out my list of the best Micro SD Cards on Amazon here.
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ProGrade USB 3.1 Gen2 - Dual Slot Card Reader
As mentioned earlier, ProGrade have also created a dual slot card reader to accompany their professional flash storage card prodcutrange.
The ProGrade card reader has a slot for both a UHS-II card as well as a CFast 2.0 card.
The card reader also hosts a new USB 3.1 Type C port, allowing us to take advantage of the new USB Type C interface benefits, as well as 3.1 Gen2 speeds.
>USB 3.1 Gen1 runs at speeds of 5Gb/s (625MB/s), while the new USB 3.1 Gen2 is double that at 10Gb/s (1250MB/s), which is much faster than our memory card speeds.
More information on everything related to USB 3.1 Type C can be found in this article.
Thanks to its USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gb/s (1,250MB/s) speeds, the card reader is able to actually additively combine transfer speeds when both slots are being copied from.
In other words, when copying files from your V90 SD Card to your computer, at 250MB/s, you can also copy files from your CFast 2.0 card at its 550MB/s at the same time, giving you an effective 800MB/s copy speed, while still having an extra 450MB/s unused thanks to the 1250MB/s bandwidth available to the USB 3.1 Gen2 technology.
The ProGrade USB 3.1 Gen2 – Dual Slot Card Reader (Price not available) comes with a USB-C Gen2 (10Gb/s), Type-C to Type-C cable as well as a USB 3.1 Gen1 (5Gb/s) Type-C to Type-A cable, a magnetic mounting plate and a easy to read manual.
USB 3.1 Cables
It would have been nice to get a USB 3.1 Gen2 (10Gb/s) Type-C to Type-A cable, as I had to purchase one separately from Amazon for $11.62, due to my computer not having any native USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C ports, as it only has USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-A ports.
Not a deal breaker, and I understand that for only Price not available for the card reader, adding an extra $11.62 cable does dig into their profit margin.
Just something to take note of when ordering, if you don’t have any USB-C ports on your computer or laptop like me.
Magnetic Mounting
One very nice feature is the metal mounting plate that the ProGrade USB 3.1 card reader comes with. At first I thought it was just a complementary novelty with their name printed on it.
But after having a quick look in the manual, I quickly realised that it in fact there to serve a very useful purpose.
You see, the bottom of the card reader is are actually magnetized, which means that you can mount the card reader anywhere that contains metal, such as you computer case. Keeping things nice and tidy.
But what about if you use your laptop a lot that is more plastic than metal?
Well this is where that branded metal plate comes in. If you flip the metal plate around, it has a removable paper with a sticky surface below, allowing you to stick the plate anywhere you like (such as your laptop).
With this done, you can then magnetically mount the Card Reader conveniently to that, thereby keeping the reader out of the way while traveling and not having it dangle over you lap but its USB cable.
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V90 SD Card Speed Tests
With all that said and done, let’s dive into the speed test benchmarks, to see how well the ProGrade SD Cards perform against the likes of the current, king of the hill, the Sony SF-G 64GB SD Card (Price not available).
To run the speed tests, I naturally found no better device to use than the ProGrade Dual Slot Card reader at hand. Reason being, is that it runs at USB 3.1 Gen2 10Gb/s (1250MB/s) meaning that it would leave no room for error due to possible bottlenecks.
And sure, for speed benchmarking, with USB 3.1 Gen1 outputting speeds of 5Gb/s (625MB/s), there will most likely also be no bottlenecks, as the SD Cards have a maximum write speed of 300Mb/s, which is only half that of USB 3.1 Gen 1 at 650MB/s, but hey, I have USB 3.1 Gen2 at my disposal, so why not make use of it.
My current computer’s motherboard didn’t have any USB 3.1 Gen2 ports, so I had to by a PCIe expansion card to give me USB 3.1 Gen2. So, I went online and bought the StarTech Dual Port USB 3.1 PCIe Card (Price not available) on Amazon.
I chose the dual USB Type-A version as I figured I would use that more in the near future more than USB-C.
This was however a bit of a mistake on my part, as only after it arrived did I realize that the included cable with the ProGrade Card Reader was USB 3.1 Gen1 only, and only the included USB Type-C cable offered USB 3.1 Gen2 speed that would be compatible with my StarTech PCIe card.
Not a train smash as this was an oversight on my part.
USB 3.1 PCIe Expansion Card
As I mentioned earlier, I simply had to order an extra USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C to Type-A cable ($11.62) from Amazon.
If any of you guys are looking at buying the ProGrade Dual Slot Card Reader ($75.00) and also don’t have any USB 3.1 Gen2 slots on your computer, then I would recommend buying the StarTech versions with one USB Type-A + USB Type-C ports (Price not available) or the Dual USB-C ports (Price not available).
That way, the included USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C cable included with the Prograde Card reader, will work perfectly.
One installed into my motherboard’s PCIe X4 Slot, I booted up, installed a driver for the StarTech card and was ready to run some benchmarks.
Here are the results.
Read and Write Speeds:
Remember that while I tested both Read and Write Speeds, the WRITE speeds are the most important factor to look for, when choosing a storage card of any type for any camera, as the recorded footage is being WRITTEN to the SD Card.
Looking at the result, we can see that the ProGrade V90 64GB SD card output a Read Speed of 256MB/s and a Write Speed of 242MB/s, while the Sony V90 64GB SD Card was able to outperform it with a Read Speed of 266MB/s and a Write Speed of 274MB/s.
NOTE: As I mentioned previously, I achieved Write Speeds of 242MB/s on the ProGrade card, when in fact the advertised maximum is only 200MB/s I found this odd, so I used another piece of software to check if this wasn’t an error, but the results were the same in both benchmarking software programs. The ProGrade was able to output 242MB/s which is 42MB/s faster than its advertised speeds. I’m not complaining though, as this error is definitely in our favour.
While the Sony still holds the crown as the fastest SD Card on the market, the ProGrade held its own, only being 4% slower in Read Speeds and 11% slower in Write Speeds.
File Copy Speeds
Copy speeds are also important to use as photographer or videographer was once we come back to our workstation after a long and enjoyable day of shooting, we need to copy our photos or videos to our workstation for editing.
The slower the card, the longer we have to wait before we can edit. Thanks to the fast USB 3.1 Gen2 speeds of the ProGrade card reader the only thing limiting us is the cards themselves.
The synthetic benchmark simulates 3 common scenarios used in everyday computing workflows.
An ISO test which is basically a single zip file
A program which is a single exe file
A game, which is a folder with many files in it
Each of these tests perform differently, in order to test both the sequential and random situations.
In this test, the ProGrade V90 was actually able to pull ahead of the Sony V90 SD Card in the ISO test, but came second in the Program and Game Tests.
Price vs Performance
At the same time, the ProGrade V90 64GB SD card ($75.00) is also 7% cheaper, than the Sony V90 64GB SD Card (Price not available), in the camera write speed test, making the difference in speeds almost equivalent to the costs.
Just for fun, I threw in my older SanDisk Extreme Pro 64GB SD Card ($34.05) into the benchmark testing to see how it performs against these two behemoths and the results were quite eye opening as it. At only 85MB/s Write Speeds, my old faithful was starting to show her age.
Mind you, in the odd 5 years of shooting over 120,000 images with the Extreme Pro in my Nikon D800, it never failed me once, and still works perfectly.
As Wes Brewer played a big part in the Extreme Pro range, it gives me confidence that the ProGrade cards will also show the same stamina down the line.
Another benefit of Prograde is that they actually have a ProGrade V90 256GB SD card (Price not available) on Amazon, while the Sony SF-G 128GB (Price not available) is Sony’s largest capacity card.
So if you are looking for bigger than 128GB, then Prograde is your only, but very capable option.
Same applies to CFast, where the Sony 128GB CFast (Price not available) is their largest capacity, while ProGrade offer a 512GB CFast Card (Price not available).
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Why buy ProGrade Products?
Wes Brewer and his team, really wants to live up to his company name to really deliver “Pro Grade” products, when you buy from their ProGrade Digital range, delivering the highest quality possible.
This is why they have taken no shortcuts and gone the extra mile, with comprehensively ID tracking and a higher grade of product testing.
Each of the ProGrade products has been stamped with a unique serial number, allowing the guys at ProGrade to track exactly what date this card was manufactured for warranty purposes, what batch of components were used cards when it was manufactured, the NAND flash type, firmware revision level and even the PCB board manufacturer.
The reason for this is that when you buy a ProGrade card from Amazon and you call Prograde with a fault, they can swiftly deliver customer service for fixing/replacing any issues that may come with their products.
With his previous involvement in both Sandisk and Lexar factories, Wes has naturally been deeply involved in the factory testing phases of other cards. He felt that it could be done better and more thoroughly, so that’s exactly what the ProGrade factory process does.
ProGrade value themselves as a company that puts their products through far more rigorous testing procedure before releasing them to the public, avoiding issues from happening all together.
Instead of only testing the initial card design and then only doing a minor test during the mass manufacturing process like other companies, ProGrade actually test each card individually before it leaves the factory and lands on the consumer’s desk.
This ensures that owners of cameras with only one card slot, will have to worry far less that a ProGrade SD Card will fail on them, which has been the case with the now diluted Lexar SD Card in recent times, which are failing more often than they should.
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Conclusion
While Sony still retains its crown in terms of speed, ProGrade are right on its heels, while also setting themselves apart, by offering a 256GB V90 SD card that Sony does not.
ProGrade comes from a long history of flash storage with decades of combined experience behind their technical team. The fact that they are innovating on new technologies such as CFexpress is certainly a good sign and I hope that they do big things for the industry, as this only benefits us as creatives.
They also seem to be a company that does not follow the corporate mentality and want to offer customer service on a personal level with all their customers. My experience with them has been very quick and fluent to say the least.
Let’s hope this continues.
Give ProGrade a try, I certainly will be keeping my new 64GB card in my Nikon camera from now on.
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V60 UHS-II SD Cards
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
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ProGrade Digital SDXC UHS-II Memory Card (64GB) | 94 Reviews | Buy Now | |
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ProGrade Digital SDXC UHS-II V60 Memory Card... | 47 Reviews | Buy Now | |
|
ProGrade Digital SDXC UHS-II Memory Card (256GB) | 16 Reviews | Buy Now |
V90 UHS-II SD Cards
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
ProGrade Digital SDXC UHS-II V90 Memory Card... | 42 Reviews | Buy Now | |
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ProGrade Digital SDXC UHS-II V90 Memory Card... | 39 Reviews | Buy Now | |
|
ProGrade Digital SDXC UHS-II V90 Memory Card... | 13 Reviews | Buy Now |
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Sony SF-G32/T1 High Performance 32GB SDHC Uhs-II... | 900 Reviews | Buy Now | |
|
Sony SF-G64/T1 High Performance 64GB SDXC Uhs-II... | 900 Reviews | Buy Now | |
|
Sony SF-G128/T1 High Performance 128GB SDXC Uhs-II... | 900 Reviews | Buy Now |
CFast Memory Cards
| Preview | Product | Rating | Price | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
ProGrade Digital CFast 2.0 Memory Card for... | 39 Reviews | Buy Now | |
|
EgoDisk Elite PRO 256GB CFast 2.0 Card-(BLACKMAGIC... | 7 Reviews | $319.90 $289.90 | Buy Now |
|
SanDisk 71931 256GB Extreme PRO CFast 2.0 Memory... | 9 Reviews | $279.95 | Buy Now |
|
Sony CAT-G128 128GB High Performance CFast G... | 43 Reviews | Buy Now |
