Lexar 32Gb, 256Gb Memory Cards Hands-On

Lexar announced a number of new products for CES 2012, including a 1000x Compact Flash card, the first 256Gb Compact Flash card, two new SDHC cards and more, we met up with Lexar to talk about the new products.

The two new Compact Flash cards have speeds of 1000x and 400x, with the speed of the UDMA 7 devices only be fully utilised by the not yet available Nikon D4 and Canon EOS 1D-X.

The high speed SDHC cards similarly need to be supported by the digital camera camera in order to use the full speed of the card. Currently the Nikon D7000 and D3100 support the highest speeds, with additional models expected to support UHS-I shortly.

When we asked about MicroSD cards, Lexar said that MicroSD cards are an area of growth due to the ever expanding mobile phone market and an increased number of compact cameras, including those from Samsung and the new Canon IXUS 500 HS, now use MicroSD cards.



Another new product from Lexar is a USB dual memory card reader, capable of reading SD or CF cards at 150MB/second. A firmware update will be available to fully utilise the full speed of UDMA 7.



Lexar Support that comes with Professional as standard: Lexar filter out memory cards that can't perform at the designated speed, wheres the majority of other memory cards simply say "upto" a certain speed. The cards also come with free lifetime image recovery software, you can also send cards back for image recovery with the free support.



The 1000x speed Compact Flash card provides 150Mb/s and comes with a new video performance guarantee that has been developed in collaberation with Canon and the new Canon EOS C300 and other video devices.



The 600x card reads at 90MB/s, while the other card runs at 400x, which is 60Mb/sec. Lexar are keen to explain that cards need good write speeds, but also good read speeds so that the photos can be quickly taken off the memory card.



Also shown were the new USB pen drives, with high speed read / write that are designed to make great backup devices, or alternatively, they can make a great way for photographers to show off their photos to others. They both feature a retractable USB plug.



The blue model is called the JumpDrive and is said to be 3x faster than the USB2 version of the Lexar JumpDrive, with the black/silver model, the Titan JumpDrive providing 150Mb/s read/write speeds.

Read more CES 2012 Coverage here.