Many of the mentioned cards are (still?) not included in the spreadsheet on your website. Would be useful to see all their results in one place, for easy comparison.
It can. You can remove the car door (not to damage it) and put an adapter (CFe to SSD) that is linked to an external SSD. Nikon rep showed that to me on the launch day.
@@Votjko - I thought you were joking, reading the first few words - "remove the car door" but, hey, typos happen to all of us. And, let's be aware that CFexpress is basically PCIe, so an adapter to an SSD with a native PCIe interface would just provide the proper connector routing without adding latency. Using USB-C would require the camera to go through PCIe>USB-C conversion and next there would be a USB-C > SSD conversion too, so your (the Nikon rep and the market options) are (should be) superior in that respect.
In terms of capacity 4 TB is max for both, I'm with you that ssd should be enabled, however the 2 interms of the capacity are available bur the problem is the expensive price. 1799$ vs 500 or 600$
I've literally just watched your first video of testing cards and have just downloaded your pdf for latest updates, just a few minuttes ago. I did notice that it said that it had been updated today. While I was looking at the pdf I got a notification of this updated video. What a coincidence :)
@@mattgranger It would be nice to also test card readers. I'm especially interested to know if the ANGELBIRD CFEXPRESS CARD READER MK2 TYPE B is faster over thunderbolt.
Thanks for doing this comparison! Greatly appreciated! I feel like the Angelbird 512 SE would've deserved an honorable mention as it's the cheapest card by far ($180 for 512gb) and a middle of the pack performer. I use two of them for Video on the Canon R5, no issues ever!
Mike, I have the Angelbird SE 512 and the card is so slow to boot up my canon R5. It’s taking roughly 2.5 sec to start up before I can take any pictures. Do you experience any similar behavior please ?
@@mikefize2279 thanks, I did reach out to Angelbird but they did not reply. So I bought another brand new card but the problem persists, still slow start up time. Finally I ordered a Sony Tough card yesterday.
Thanks, Matt!! I admire all the time and effort you put into this test. I just bought an R3 so I’m trying to find a good pro card in the 160, 256, or maybe 512 range size. I’m only shooting wildlife stills so I don’t think I need more than that. Thanks.
I advise very strongly against Angelbird cards. I had 2 AV Pro 256GB casings literally fall apart just sitting on my desk. They confirmed they had molding issues. Now the SX 160GB is too chunky and doesn't fit in the Z9. Their response was to jam it in the £5300 camera card slot and it'll make space over time
I just got 2 512Gb Se cards and they won't fit in my Z9 either, they go in but they don't click into place so they are going back. My Sony tough cards work perfectly in the z9
Thanks , Matt. So informative! Great tip on the Angelbird AV PRo. I see it comes in 1TB - about $.50 USD per gig. Should we assume it's the same speed as the 4tb? Thanks!
"Nikon may not have the facilities to make these cards" - Nikon has been leader (with Canon) in the development and manufacture of machines to make chips until early 2000s. Then ASML took over, by leading a consortium of parties. These machines are sold to "foundries" that "make" chips. Today, given the nano-scale-related-complexity of making components in chips, these machines are so expensive that there are not many factories left that "make" chips and one factory burning down in the CoVid era contributed to the worldwide shortage we still experience today. While "foundries" "make" chips, they do not design them. The design of chips is done in specialized CAD software where circuits are defined consisting of transistors, resistors, capacitors, coils, connections, (logical) switches, etc., by the clients of the foundry. An example of a wold-class leading "designer" of chips is ARM that has never "made" a single chip. They always relied on foundries to "make" their designs. Almost all smartphones today (billions) have an ARM CPU or one derived off that. A "foundry" that people in photography know well is Sony Semiconductor. When we are told that "Sony makes Nikon sensors" then that is the most uninformed irrelevant remark in this chip-manufacture market. "Semiconductor" makes Sony-stills (KonicaMinolta) chips too. And the design comes from the camera manufacturer. Because foundries will evaluate designs for production feasibility, they have in-depth knowledge of chip manufacture and we can imagine a group of such engineers at the foundry working with the client so as to prevent the foundry having to tell the client in a late stage that what they designed is hard to make physically or will not perform well because of long connectors or layering problems. Here the foundry learns a lot from the client about what the client wants and needs, and such foundry teams work inside "Chinese Walls" to keep them separate from teams working opposite other clients. Leaking knowledge between such foundry teams is a sin that will get you fired on the spot, in such a context. So, Nikon may have designed the card down to the deepest level - logically. Such a CAD design then must be converted into a physical design that the machines in the foundry can actually realize. Or Nikon may have taken another brand's card and rebadged it. Potentially replacing the firmware. Looking at the cards' capacities in this test by Matt, we see conventional digital capacities: 128, 256, 512, 1024, 4096. But we also see relatively "strange" 160, 320, 325, 640, 650, 660 numbers. These strange numbers have an interesting history. First how cards work in a wear or lifetime context. With each rewrite, the cells in flash memory wear out - electronics engineers call partial wear "brownout" as opposed to "blackout" that is complete and instantaneous. Defined differently on a deeper level, we could call this wear a form of brownout. This is to say that the lifetime of flash memory is finite in terms of how many times a cell can be rewritten - it blacks out at some point. There are different ways to deal with this wear: (a) use better cells - significantly more expensive - for longe lifetime, (b) use cheap cells but provide more than labeled, i.e. more than visible to the host (this is called "over-provisioning"). The I/O controller in the flash memory with its firmware performs "wear leveling" and when the controller has more capacity than the label says, it can use this in its round-robin approach to storage, but there can never be more data visible to the host than labeled. This over-provisioning approach is purely there to extend lifetime. If we look at Samsung's SSDs, we see a line called "EVO" and a line called "PRO" and the difference in lifetime is about a factor 10 - in terms of cell rewrites. Because the card controller (firmware) keeps track of "blocks" instead of individual cells, a block marked bad by the controller will still have usable space, but this cannot be made available beyond the predefined number of block rewrites. Between an EVO and a PRO, the former may have 300 rewrite lifetime and the PRO 3,000. Store write-once, read-many data on the EVO (OS, apps, content) and store data that are updated often on the PRO (page file, app setting data, catalogues, XMP files, etc.). And, never reboot your Windows PC with SSD. In a fulltime video production house, the card wear must be monitored and this must be based on awareness of what their cards can survive. Apps exist that can read a card's internal wear leveling database and report card health based on that. With options (a) and (b) we have to understand that these are not mutually exclusive and for instance "data center" or "enterprise" flash storage exists that pairs expensive memory (a) with the over-provisioning of (b). Now imagine a flash memory product with a capacity of 256GB advertised on the label that internally has 128GB more as over-provisioning (i.e. 384GB inside). Its price will reflect that and we may think it is expensive per GB. Second - here come the odd capacity numbers. As card manufacturers (vendors) have built experience with over-provisioning cards in their own practice and the market place, they now backtrack a bit from the over-provisioning amounts. Imagine the 256GB card with 384GB under the hood and backtracking from over-provisioning: they shift 64GB from hidden to visible and now the same card is sold as 320GB - with a big reduction in the eyes of the buyer in the per GB price - the capacity on the label increased 25% with exactly the same physical product while the price may have increased a bit, even, for the same physical thing. When we compare cards as to their per GB costs, we have to really include the expected lifetime of the card/memory cells. The industry has a parameter for that, called "Total Bytes Written". I asked one card vendor for that number with their cards and they answered "enough" - that felt like being given the middle finger and I will never buy that brand, ever, in my own lifetime. When I asked another brand, they politely gave the number - with the proper unit. If you have a card of 256GB (that's 0.25TB) and the card has a TBW of, say, 100TB, then the number of cell/block rewrites it can survive is 100/0.25 = 400 times. Filling such a card twice daily in a a video house means it "dies" after 200 production days - not because the electronics blackout, but because of the card's firmware shutting it down as some form of data integrity is no longer guaranteed. So, buying used cards without knowing card health is very risky in this respect. One YT photography influencer buys the cheapest simplest biggest card for his stills and fills them, but never reformats/erases/rewrites them - he said a couple years ago. The cards are a tax-deductible expense to him and part of his operational cost. To him the full cards are a form of backup. What he ignores, is how long the integrity of the data on the card is guaranteed when powered off. A debating group of people with degrees in electronics and quantum physics may agree that the answer to that question is "between 7 hours and 7,000 hours". Quantum physics is 100% relative and 100% about chances, after all. Here we have another quality of cards that is often overlooked: does the card implement a form of data integrity control (like ECC)? Some do and advertise it. Maybe cards that do not advertise it, do not have it. And yet another that the electronics/quantum physics team will not overlook: the operating temperature range - enthalpy is no longer what it used to be. One vendor guarantees performance down to -25C (-13F) and almost all guarantee down to -10C (14F). If you have watched nature photographer Morten Hilmer on Svalbard and shooting musk oxen in Norway, then you may have seen his thermometer indicating -20C (-4F) and him (carelessly?) placing his camera in the snow out there. Carelessly, we wonder - well every temperature change generates the risk of condensation and consequential electronics issues and a warmer-than-the-air lens hood will cause thermal motion by heating the air in front of the front lens up, so this gives optical distortion that is very visible in shots with very long lenses with very large lens hoods. Not careless, but very thoughtful. And a challenge to both memory cards and batteries. If we only look at $/GB and a bit of speed, then we overlook a world of complexities. Vendors - card brands - follow the economic principle to offer a package with partially hidden/masked/shielded qualities so as to make comparison difficult for the buyer. If we want to make serious comparisons we need to unmask those hidden qualities ourselves.
@@mmz0810 - relative to the time people spend watching videos, often by posers, and the bad assumptions passed on as wisdom, the reading time is very short. I hope you were able to understand what I wrote.
You should make a card comparison video. It would be a lot more in depth. A long but informative read. I now understand why the strange capacities exist. Which companies did and did not tell you the card's TBW? Another metric that's overlooked is the card's standby and active temperature. These cards get toasty and raise the camera's internal body temperature so they will effect video recording time. Can you elaborate on why you said to never reboot a Windows PC with SSD?
@@Rocky_KO - thank you. Angelbird gave me "enough" and Delkin gave me full and precise TBW answers. I personally have no reason to look at high temperatures because (a) I do not spray and pray and (b) my brand does not overheat :) . But, you have a good point there, in general, when I typically point to low temperatures only. At this moment the cards being guaranteed under -10C (14F) are Sony Tough G-series. As Windows only runs comfortably with a large page file - I tried running it without page file and that should be possible but isn't - imagine a 64GB RAM workstation and a 1TB SSD. I frequently run my RAM memory space above 32GB and video RAM above 6GB (of 11 present), incidentally above 8GB. That is associated with a large page file and every reboot means the page file is deleted in shut-down and upon boot created completely anew. And that is a fast way to burn through the TBW of your SSD. Yes, the cards get warmer when you write to them. I would personally forget about standby and read temperatures and merely be concerned about writing and maintaining data integrity - not all card brands/versions have data integrity protection (or only a few advertise it). In this context we need serious heatsinks for a camera's CPU, cache RAM and memory cards. I would see 8K raw as a threat to each of these and this is why a Nikon Z 9 is big, with a lot of heatsink, and does not overheat. And it has a processor with so much bandwidth that it does not have to run very hot in the first place. I guess.
@@jpdj2715 Delkin sounds like a good company. Is that what you're using when you said "my brand doesn't overheat"? Which cards have data integrity protection?
Good overview of those cards, very useful. Suggestion: Add a price range to the PDF. Of course it's not possible to have accurate prices, but price ranges could make looking the cards up on the net easier. Something like "as of 2022" US$ 0-200, 200-500, 500-1000, +1000, to give one a rough idea for each card. This will be interesting for me once the z9 comes down to the z7 type of camera, guess my (free with the z7 kit) XQD 64gb will get replaced then. As a still person I won't need particularly big cards, so 128-256gb will easily do. 170 bucks for the Angelbird 160GB AV PRO, not so bad. For travel I still combine that puny 64gb card with a Nexto drive. $750 with 2TB SSD. Add a 2TB SSD for $200 (or a 2TB HDD for $60) and you get a 2TB storage solution with backup for under US$1000 without the need of carrying a laptop. Still my preferred solution for my trips as I like to be as mobile as possible. (The limited editing and sending images out to friends or for social media is done by cell phone.) Not for everyone of course, but works very well for me.
No Lexar diamond series? Description on B&H claims to be minimum 1600 mb/s write, almost 15% faster than the number 1 rated card here. Odd to not include it.
For video it makes more sense to use an Atomos Ninja and the Angelbird SSD cards which provide high write speeds and a 2TB one sells for $499 at this time. No file limit size or recording duratin limitation with the Ninja or Shogun recorders.
SanDisk has always been my go to brand for reliability and quality since CF cards but since being acquired by WD their quality and reliability has just plummeted which is sad...
Hey Matt thanks for the time you spend doing these tests, your very informative, and with your busy schedule I really dont know how you keep up ! Can I ask however without using to much of your time - on your downloadable chart, you have the “angel bird EX” description (also described as slightly larger - what do you mean regarding larger ?) and its also capable of doing 8k video, Is this the SE version as I could not find an EX version, also On your TH-cam video snapshot it does show an angelbird SE, is this that card ? and what do you think regarding using it just for video ?
Nice video, thank you for sharing. The price of theses memory cards are insane! For who works with video recording, is way better to buy external recorder and a bunch of SSD's.
So I just got my Z9 and looking at cards. I photograph 40% wildlife, 40% landscape, 15% dogs, horses and rodeo people and the reminder is just general and portraits. I don't really do video unless it is horses fighting or bears. In fact I usually am so focused on the wildlife action for stills that I forget to do so. Taking that in mind which are these cards would you consider. Probably shooting in LL. Thanks
Impressive summary, this video thingi requires some serious investment ! Imagine post production - wow!! I'm a still wildlife photographer and my cloud storage on LR is hitting the ceiling after moving to z9!
So helpful, thank you. I’m mainly stills, but tested the Sandisk 128gig, 1200mb write cards, and they don’t work for 8k or 4K 120, they both gave up after a few seconds. Will be after an angelbird when they eventually come back into stock 😂
Hi, Matt, I am new to your site and have signed up. I have greatly enjoyed your youtube videos. I just watched this one, and I believe that you neglected to include one important detail in your spreadsheet. What happens with each card when you hit the buffer? Some cards continue to shoot at a reduced rate, like 14-15 frames per second and continue to do so forever, while others get much slower and are inconsistent, even completely stopping at some times. Would you mind including this data in new column in your pdf table? I think most people would be willing to have a slightly smaller buffer if the card continue to write at a reasonable speed for a long time. Thanks, Corey
HI corey, it is really hard to quantify that in a meaningful way. For example the top cards stutter but keep shooting at probably 10 frames a second. If you pause for a second, then it is cleared and can go again. The worst cards stagger along at 1 frame a second. But trying to time this specifically is almost impossible and will be inconsistent.
Angelbird AV Pro is a crap card. I bought a 500 GB one and use it once. Started to record mp4. 4k and the camera suddenly stopped and it went to freeze. Tried to shoot off the camera but nothing was working anymore. The only option was to get the battery out of the camera. After I turned the camera on again the card was not recognized by the camera anymore. Very disappointed because I could not shoot an event that I was paid to do it. For the amount of money that I paid for the card, this is unacceptable. Just want to mention that I am taking care of my tools and this is not a hate review. Is my experience with this card. Unfortunately, i can't upload a picture here as proof.
Can I ask you both where you bought these cards? I’m a professional as well, and just bought a lemon angel bird with shit house specs accidentally (1000 mb/sustained read write) being sold off to me as if it’s the latest tech av pro CX express type B from a major camera retailer. I specifically asked for a card that could cope with 4K and 8K raw so they should have known what I was asking for. After digging around online made some alarming discoveries about the packaging. Has basically a fake Louis Vuitton level of deceitful and deliberately misleading advertising. Right down to emulating the font used of a real angel bird CX with 30 percent faster performance. They even have put weird dodgy alterations to the look of the font slightly so it looks exactly the same as the top tier card but like how it would look buying it in a camera shop in Thailand or Bali or something with a tape measure and weird black dots over the font. I actually think there is a possible scandal going on. There are only two camera houses in Australia that sell this particular card but they are major ones. It has a weird 1700mb/s advertised speed but you have to read the description carefully to see the sustained is only 1000 mb/s and since the card is advertised for $1550 and high ceiling read you’re not expecting that kind of shit sustained performance. It also has a weirdly worded sentence saying “Photo, HD Video, RAW 4K to 12K.” Super dodge.
@@conradtaylor9513I purchased both of my cards from CVP, a reputable store in the UK. I don't think my card was fake. Card failures seem quite common but not widely discussed. It wasn't just my card that had issues.
I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong but my ProGrade Cobalt 650GB, will happily take lossless RAW only (not RAW+JPG) photos in FX mode (46MP) at 20 shots/sec and never go below buffer "r017". I initially tested it with 800 shots continuous and just retested it with 300 shots. Manual focus so it's not set to focus release. Shots in focus so there's no issue with exceptional compression due to black frame/blurry mess. It's also worth noting that ProGrade (and Delkin?) advertise minimum sustained speed -- for PG Cobalt 650 it's 1400MB/s. My RAW files seem to go up to 65MB so.. 1300MB/s required for 20 shots per second (?)
@@mattgranger Lossless RAW only, but I figured out what's going on. For some reason for both AF and MF my Z9's only shooting just over 15 shots per second. Shutter speed of 1/100th, mode dial set to H, continuous shooting speed (high) set to 20... but when you look at the timestamp for the first image and the last image I'm getting ~1000 frames per 67 seconds (also checked by timing the burst manually). So ~15fps. I have no idea why.
@@mattgranger ...and further solved. Switching to 1/400th shutter allowed for actual 20 shots/sec and ~73 shots (lossless raw) before buffer expiry, a decent but not great showing. It's funny because I would have thought 1/100th shutter would allow 20 fps. I wonder where the breakpoint is.
@@mattgranger I had that happen with angel bird.. hope ur issue gets resolved quickly** hopefully the Nikon cards hold up a little better I think that’s my next purchase
I currently have 2ea Delkin Power (not black) 128gb. They are a great, reasonably priced option. I haven’t tested 8k yet, but it does 4k fine. I’m mainly stills and it’ll do up to 82 frames or so before hitting the buffer, at 20fps lossless raw. I believe I was in the 720-760 frames range when using 120fps. Stays cooler than most as well. But for all the lines, the performance can change a lot based on which size you choose. I don’t think the other Delkin powers are as good, and with Delkin black there is a size or 2 that isn’t that great too
Glad they’re working for you. FYI all cards will do normal 4K. If you want to compare to my test, it’s the prores 4.1k 60p I was testing as the lower format
As the Hoodman 128GB performed so well, would the 512GB model perform just as well? I am interested as it is much better value than the competition, at $0.78 per GB, but makes no claims about sustained write speeds. ProGrade also offers a Cobalt 165GB 2-Pack which is $324, making it $0.98 per GB, a good value for those who prefer to have many smaller capacity cards.
Can’t say sorry. Some really do vary in performance - even the smaller wise ones are slower. I only mentioned larger prograde as I know they’re very similar to the 325. But I’ve not tested larger hoodman options
Very helpful, but most Mirrorless cameras have a combination of CF Express and SD. In other to be cautious in case of card failure many photographers fill both slots to the issue is what is the right one of each of these in terms of the best speed
Hi Matt. Great videos. Thanks for testing for us. There was someone saying on a video that Anglebird cards do not eject from slot 1 on the Z9 they get stuck. Have you experienced any problem ?
Did the 4TB Angelbird actually format to 4TB in camera? I didn't think the camera filesystem handled 4TB cards. Plus the capacity times you mentioned sound low.
Great stuff Matt ! I would love a comparison regarding reliability if it can be researched somehow (ex type of flash, controller, card construction, error correcting if existing etc) Maybe it’s a bit too hard to research this type of stuff since the info it’s not available without some serious teardowns :) Speed it’s important but i think reliability tops it. For some use cases where you don’t need speed (stills only, landscapes, portraits, events etc) … reliability comes first :)
Hi Matt I just got a Delkin Black 512 CF express b card for my Nikon Z9 I cannot do a full format on the card I can only do a quick format All the other cards work fine doing both formats Can you do a full format? Is there some setting I am missing? Thank you Mauro
Has anyone had a Delkin 128GB typeB, come back and say, No system program on card? The card showed up, with the Files(for a sec), then the files disappeared. Card was sill there.
Whole Video about results and for results you need to give you email and three generation names and surnames behind you. Then finally you get hell knows what. What a sales man. Matt the money maker.
It doesn't pay to scrimp on cheap cards. I had one several years ago that would start corrupting files when it got half full. I bet Nikon isn't making those cards. I would bet one of the major companies are making them and putting Nikon's name on them.
Absolutely. Of course not everyone needs to pay for the fastest or biggest; I hope the test results will help people find what suits them best personally.
I do wonder about one thing. Yes, the card will be the bottleneck for clearing the buffer. But the Sony A1 can do 30fps (compressed) RAW at a similar resolution, with type A cards. So does it have a bigger internal buffer then? And if so, why did Nikon put a relatively small buffer in the Z9?
How many shots before the A1 is buffering? That's the real question. If it is getting similar results to the Z9, then I would guess it has a bigger buffer as the A1 cards are slower.
Recently got back into photography after a long break. Old SD cards were known to go bad randomly, with excessive use, or exposure to extreme cold or heat. Are CFexpress B prone to same? I'd like to buy a larger card but have been sticking to 120gb size as I'm fearful cards will go bad or slow down with use.
Gosh Matt. Can you just put up a table of the performance of the cards and talk to it? Its time consuming to listen to bits here and there with no set structure and irrelevant comments like getting this card from so and so. I quit watching after jumping around and not finding what I want.
I used Angelbird 4Tb CFexpress on the GH6 for 3 weeks 5.7k 30p Pro Res unlimited recording little over 2 hrs and reformatted each use flawlessly until the 2.0 update and encountered error this Cf express exceeds 2Tb.now useless. ANGELBIRD IVE NEVER HAD ANY ISSUES. They have stepped up to a problem that is not w ther card and working w me to solve the issue.
Over 25 cards tested! Results: geni.us/CFeB
Z Setup Guide: learn.mattgranger.com/courses/zsetup
Many of the mentioned cards are (still?) not included in the spreadsheet on your website. Would be useful to see all their results in one place, for easy comparison.
That 4TB card is a beast. Nikon should allow to record directly into SSD drive using type C just like Blackmagic let you do with BMPCC 6k/4k series.
I keep also asking for this. It would make the z9 undoubtedly the best
It can. You can remove the car door (not to damage it) and put an adapter (CFe to SSD) that is linked to an external SSD. Nikon rep showed that to me on the launch day.
@@Votjko - I thought you were joking, reading the first few words - "remove the car door" but, hey, typos happen to all of us. And, let's be aware that CFexpress is basically PCIe, so an adapter to an SSD with a native PCIe interface would just provide the proper connector routing without adding latency. Using USB-C would require the camera to go through PCIe>USB-C conversion and next there would be a USB-C > SSD conversion too, so your (the Nikon rep and the market options) are (should be) superior in that respect.
In terms of capacity 4 TB is max for both, I'm with you that ssd should be enabled, however the 2 interms of the capacity are available bur the problem is the expensive price. 1799$ vs 500 or 600$
lumix cameras also let you do that
Super helpful and informative as ever. Thanks Matt! Great work!
My pleasure
I've literally just watched your first video of testing cards and have just downloaded your pdf for latest updates, just a few minuttes ago. I did notice that it said that it had been updated today. While I was looking at the pdf I got a notification of this updated video. What a coincidence :)
Nice timing!
@@mattgranger It would be nice to also test card readers. I'm especially interested to know if the ANGELBIRD CFEXPRESS CARD READER MK2 TYPE B is faster over thunderbolt.
How about reliability? Me as wedding photographer can not allow to take photos on a card which dies.
Matt, you are number one. Your hard work pays off for us. Thank You!
Very helpful! Thanks for sharing Matt!
Thanks for doing this comparison! Greatly appreciated! I feel like the Angelbird 512 SE would've deserved an honorable mention as it's the cheapest card by far ($180 for 512gb) and a middle of the pack performer. I use two of them for Video on the Canon R5, no issues ever!
Mike, I have the Angelbird SE 512 and the card is so slow to boot up my canon R5. It’s taking roughly 2.5 sec to start up before I can take any pictures. Do you experience any similar behavior please ?
@@hellolau I have had no issues with mine! Did you already try and reach out to Angelbird?
@@mikefize2279 thanks, I did reach out to Angelbird but they did not reply. So I bought another brand new card but the problem persists, still slow start up time. Finally I ordered a Sony Tough card yesterday.
Thanks, Matt!! I admire all the time and effort you put into this test. I just bought an R3 so I’m trying to find a good pro card in the 160, 256, or maybe 512 range size. I’m only shooting wildlife stills so I don’t think I need more than that. Thanks.
Amazing, superb analysis and we expect no less. Got myself a cobalt 160 GB . My budget is modest. Hope it matches the speed of it’s bigger cousins.
I advise very strongly against Angelbird cards.
I had 2 AV Pro 256GB casings literally fall apart just sitting on my desk. They confirmed they had molding issues. Now the SX 160GB is too chunky and doesn't fit in the Z9. Their response was to jam it in the £5300 camera card slot and it'll make space over time
Sorry to hear that!
I just got 2 512Gb Se cards and they won't fit in my Z9 either, they go in but they don't click into place so they are going back. My Sony tough cards work perfectly in the z9
That is quite the comparison and very informative video on the memory cards for mirrorless camera. Great video.
Grate Video Matt, do make a test for reliability and endurance in time?
Thanks , Matt. So informative! Great tip on the Angelbird AV PRo. I see it comes in 1TB - about $.50 USD per gig. Should we assume it's the same speed as the 4tb? Thanks!
"Nikon may not have the facilities to make these cards" - Nikon has been leader (with Canon) in the development and manufacture of machines to make chips until early 2000s. Then ASML took over, by leading a consortium of parties. These machines are sold to "foundries" that "make" chips. Today, given the nano-scale-related-complexity of making components in chips, these machines are so expensive that there are not many factories left that "make" chips and one factory burning down in the CoVid era contributed to the worldwide shortage we still experience today.
While "foundries" "make" chips, they do not design them. The design of chips is done in specialized CAD software where circuits are defined consisting of transistors, resistors, capacitors, coils, connections, (logical) switches, etc., by the clients of the foundry. An example of a wold-class leading "designer" of chips is ARM that has never "made" a single chip. They always relied on foundries to "make" their designs. Almost all smartphones today (billions) have an ARM CPU or one derived off that. A "foundry" that people in photography know well is Sony Semiconductor. When we are told that "Sony makes Nikon sensors" then that is the most uninformed irrelevant remark in this chip-manufacture market. "Semiconductor" makes Sony-stills (KonicaMinolta) chips too. And the design comes from the camera manufacturer. Because foundries will evaluate designs for production feasibility, they have in-depth knowledge of chip manufacture and we can imagine a group of such engineers at the foundry working with the client so as to prevent the foundry having to tell the client in a late stage that what they designed is hard to make physically or will not perform well because of long connectors or layering problems. Here the foundry learns a lot from the client about what the client wants and needs, and such foundry teams work inside "Chinese Walls" to keep them separate from teams working opposite other clients. Leaking knowledge between such foundry teams is a sin that will get you fired on the spot, in such a context.
So, Nikon may have designed the card down to the deepest level - logically. Such a CAD design then must be converted into a physical design that the machines in the foundry can actually realize.
Or Nikon may have taken another brand's card and rebadged it. Potentially replacing the firmware.
Looking at the cards' capacities in this test by Matt, we see conventional digital capacities: 128, 256, 512, 1024, 4096. But we also see relatively "strange" 160, 320, 325, 640, 650, 660 numbers.
These strange numbers have an interesting history.
First how cards work in a wear or lifetime context. With each rewrite, the cells in flash memory wear out - electronics engineers call partial wear "brownout" as opposed to "blackout" that is complete and instantaneous. Defined differently on a deeper level, we could call this wear a form of brownout. This is to say that the lifetime of flash memory is finite in terms of how many times a cell can be rewritten - it blacks out at some point.
There are different ways to deal with this wear: (a) use better cells - significantly more expensive - for longe lifetime, (b) use cheap cells but provide more than labeled, i.e. more than visible to the host (this is called "over-provisioning").
The I/O controller in the flash memory with its firmware performs "wear leveling" and when the controller has more capacity than the label says, it can use this in its round-robin approach to storage, but there can never be more data visible to the host than labeled. This over-provisioning approach is purely there to extend lifetime. If we look at Samsung's SSDs, we see a line called "EVO" and a line called "PRO" and the difference in lifetime is about a factor 10 - in terms of cell rewrites. Because the card controller (firmware) keeps track of "blocks" instead of individual cells, a block marked bad by the controller will still have usable space, but this cannot be made available beyond the predefined number of block rewrites. Between an EVO and a PRO, the former may have 300 rewrite lifetime and the PRO 3,000. Store write-once, read-many data on the EVO (OS, apps, content) and store data that are updated often on the PRO (page file, app setting data, catalogues, XMP files, etc.).
And, never reboot your Windows PC with SSD.
In a fulltime video production house, the card wear must be monitored and this must be based on awareness of what their cards can survive. Apps exist that can read a card's internal wear leveling database and report card health based on that.
With options (a) and (b) we have to understand that these are not mutually exclusive and for instance "data center" or "enterprise" flash storage exists that pairs expensive memory (a) with the over-provisioning of (b).
Now imagine a flash memory product with a capacity of 256GB advertised on the label that internally has 128GB more as over-provisioning (i.e. 384GB inside). Its price will reflect that and we may think it is expensive per GB.
Second - here come the odd capacity numbers. As card manufacturers (vendors) have built experience with over-provisioning cards in their own practice and the market place, they now backtrack a bit from the over-provisioning amounts. Imagine the 256GB card with 384GB under the hood and backtracking from over-provisioning: they shift 64GB from hidden to visible and now the same card is sold as 320GB - with a big reduction in the eyes of the buyer in the per GB price - the capacity on the label increased 25% with exactly the same physical product while the price may have increased a bit, even, for the same physical thing.
When we compare cards as to their per GB costs, we have to really include the expected lifetime of the card/memory cells. The industry has a parameter for that, called "Total Bytes Written". I asked one card vendor for that number with their cards and they answered "enough" - that felt like being given the middle finger and I will never buy that brand, ever, in my own lifetime. When I asked another brand, they politely gave the number - with the proper unit. If you have a card of 256GB (that's 0.25TB) and the card has a TBW of, say, 100TB, then the number of cell/block rewrites it can survive is 100/0.25 = 400 times. Filling such a card twice daily in a a video house means it "dies" after 200 production days - not because the electronics blackout, but because of the card's firmware shutting it down as some form of data integrity is no longer guaranteed.
So, buying used cards without knowing card health is very risky in this respect.
One YT photography influencer buys the cheapest simplest biggest card for his stills and fills them, but never reformats/erases/rewrites them - he said a couple years ago. The cards are a tax-deductible expense to him and part of his operational cost. To him the full cards are a form of backup. What he ignores, is how long the integrity of the data on the card is guaranteed when powered off. A debating group of people with degrees in electronics and quantum physics may agree that the answer to that question is "between 7 hours and 7,000 hours". Quantum physics is 100% relative and 100% about chances, after all.
Here we have another quality of cards that is often overlooked: does the card implement a form of data integrity control (like ECC)? Some do and advertise it. Maybe cards that do not advertise it, do not have it.
And yet another that the electronics/quantum physics team will not overlook: the operating temperature range - enthalpy is no longer what it used to be. One vendor guarantees performance down to -25C (-13F) and almost all guarantee down to -10C (14F). If you have watched nature photographer Morten Hilmer on Svalbard and shooting musk oxen in Norway, then you may have seen his thermometer indicating -20C (-4F) and him (carelessly?) placing his camera in the snow out there. Carelessly, we wonder - well every temperature change generates the risk of condensation and consequential electronics issues and a warmer-than-the-air lens hood will cause thermal motion by heating the air in front of the front lens up, so this gives optical distortion that is very visible in shots with very long lenses with very large lens hoods. Not careless, but very thoughtful. And a challenge to both memory cards and batteries.
If we only look at $/GB and a bit of speed, then we overlook a world of complexities. Vendors - card brands - follow the economic principle to offer a package with partially hidden/masked/shielded qualities so as to make comparison difficult for the buyer. If we want to make serious comparisons we need to unmask those hidden qualities ourselves.
This is the longest comment I’ve ever seen on TH-cam
@@mmz0810 - relative to the time people spend watching videos, often by posers, and the bad assumptions passed on as wisdom, the reading time is very short. I hope you were able to understand what I wrote.
You should make a card comparison video. It would be a lot more in depth. A long but informative read.
I now understand why the strange capacities exist. Which companies did and did not tell you the card's TBW?
Another metric that's overlooked is the card's standby and active temperature.
These cards get toasty and raise the camera's internal body temperature so they will effect video recording time.
Can you elaborate on why you said to never reboot a Windows PC with SSD?
@@Rocky_KO - thank you. Angelbird gave me "enough" and Delkin gave me full and precise TBW answers. I personally have no reason to look at high temperatures because (a) I do not spray and pray and (b) my brand does not overheat :) . But, you have a good point there, in general, when I typically point to low temperatures only. At this moment the cards being guaranteed under -10C (14F) are Sony Tough G-series.
As Windows only runs comfortably with a large page file - I tried running it without page file and that should be possible but isn't - imagine a 64GB RAM workstation and a 1TB SSD. I frequently run my RAM memory space above 32GB and video RAM above 6GB (of 11 present), incidentally above 8GB. That is associated with a large page file and every reboot means the page file is deleted in shut-down and upon boot created completely anew. And that is a fast way to burn through the TBW of your SSD.
Yes, the cards get warmer when you write to them. I would personally forget about standby and read temperatures and merely be concerned about writing and maintaining data integrity - not all card brands/versions have data integrity protection (or only a few advertise it). In this context we need serious heatsinks for a camera's CPU, cache RAM and memory cards. I would see 8K raw as a threat to each of these and this is why a Nikon Z 9 is big, with a lot of heatsink, and does not overheat. And it has a processor with so much bandwidth that it does not have to run very hot in the first place. I guess.
@@jpdj2715 Delkin sounds like a good company. Is that what you're using when you said "my brand doesn't overheat"?
Which cards have data integrity protection?
Good overview of those cards, very useful. Suggestion: Add a price range to the PDF. Of course it's not possible to have accurate prices, but price ranges could make looking the cards up on the net easier. Something like "as of 2022" US$ 0-200, 200-500, 500-1000, +1000, to give one a rough idea for each card.
This will be interesting for me once the z9 comes down to the z7 type of camera, guess my (free with the z7 kit) XQD 64gb will get replaced then. As a still person I won't need particularly big cards, so 128-256gb will easily do. 170 bucks for the Angelbird 160GB AV PRO, not so bad.
For travel I still combine that puny 64gb card with a Nexto drive. $750 with 2TB SSD. Add a 2TB SSD for $200 (or a 2TB HDD for $60) and you get a 2TB storage solution with backup for under US$1000 without the need of carrying a laptop. Still my preferred solution for my trips as I like to be as mobile as possible. (The limited editing and sending images out to friends or for social media is done by cell phone.)
Not for everyone of course, but works very well for me.
Reminds me of when i went crazy with the Sony Cards for my 850 when it was all the rage.. close to $3k in cards..
Thanks Matt!!
No Lexar diamond series? Description on B&H claims to be minimum 1600 mb/s write, almost 15% faster than the number 1 rated card here. Odd to not include it.
For video it makes more sense to use an Atomos Ninja and the Angelbird SSD cards which provide high write speeds and a 2TB one sells for $499 at this time. No file limit size or recording duratin limitation with the Ninja or Shogun recorders.
TY - greatly appreciated.
SanDisk has always been my go to brand for reliability and quality since CF cards but since being acquired by WD their quality and reliability has just plummeted which is sad...
Hey Matt thanks for the time you spend doing these tests, your very informative, and with your busy schedule I really dont know how you keep up ! Can I ask however without using to much of your time - on your downloadable chart, you have the “angel bird EX” description (also described as slightly larger - what do you mean regarding larger ?) and its also capable of doing 8k video, Is this the SE version as I could not find an EX version, also On your TH-cam video snapshot it does show an angelbird SE, is this that card ? and what do you think regarding using it just for video ?
Nice video, thank you for sharing.
The price of theses memory cards are insane!
For who works with video recording, is way better to buy external recorder and a bunch of SSD's.
Yep, although sadly not all cameras support it
So I just got my Z9 and looking at cards. I photograph 40% wildlife, 40% landscape, 15% dogs, horses and rodeo people and the reminder is just general and portraits. I don't really do video unless it is horses fighting or bears. In fact I usually am so focused on the wildlife action for stills that I forget to do so. Taking that in mind which are these cards would you consider. Probably shooting in LL. Thanks
Impressive summary, this video thingi requires some serious investment ! Imagine post production - wow!! I'm a still wildlife photographer and my cloud storage on LR is hitting the ceiling after moving to z9!
So helpful, thank you. I’m mainly stills, but tested the Sandisk 128gig, 1200mb write cards, and they don’t work for 8k or 4K 120, they both gave up after a few seconds. Will be after an angelbird when they eventually come back into stock 😂
Check BH - link provided. I think they’re in stock.
Hi, Matt,
I am new to your site and have signed up. I have greatly enjoyed your youtube videos. I just watched this one, and I believe that you neglected to include one important detail in your spreadsheet. What happens with each card when you hit the buffer? Some cards continue to shoot at a reduced rate, like 14-15 frames per second and continue to do so forever, while others get much slower and are inconsistent, even completely stopping at some times. Would you mind including this data in new column in your pdf table? I think most people would be willing to have a slightly smaller buffer if the card continue to write at a reasonable speed for a long time.
Thanks,
Corey
HI corey, it is really hard to quantify that in a meaningful way. For example the top cards stutter but keep shooting at probably 10 frames a second. If you pause for a second, then it is cleared and can go again. The worst cards stagger along at 1 frame a second.
But trying to time this specifically is almost impossible and will be inconsistent.
Angelbird AV Pro is a crap card. I bought a 500 GB one and use it once. Started to record mp4. 4k and the camera suddenly stopped and it went to freeze. Tried to shoot off the camera but nothing was working anymore. The only option was to get the battery out of the camera. After I turned the camera on again the card was not recognized by the camera anymore. Very disappointed because I could not shoot an event that I was paid to do it. For the amount of money that I paid for the card, this is unacceptable. Just want to mention that I am taking care of my tools and this is not a hate review. Is my experience with this card. Unfortunately, i can't upload a picture here as proof.
The exact same thing happened to me with the Angelbird!
Can I ask you both where you bought these cards? I’m a professional as well, and just bought a lemon angel bird with shit house specs accidentally (1000 mb/sustained read write) being sold off to me as if it’s the latest tech av pro CX express type B from a major camera retailer. I specifically asked for a card that could cope with 4K and 8K raw so they should have known what I was asking for. After digging around online made some alarming discoveries about the packaging. Has basically a fake Louis Vuitton level of deceitful and deliberately misleading advertising. Right down to emulating the font used of a real angel bird CX with 30 percent faster performance. They even have put weird dodgy alterations to the look of the font slightly so it looks exactly the same as the top tier card but like how it would look buying it in a camera shop in Thailand or Bali or something with a tape measure and weird black dots over the font. I actually think there is a possible scandal going on. There are only two camera houses in Australia that sell this particular card but they are major ones. It has a weird 1700mb/s advertised speed but you have to read the description carefully to see the sustained is only 1000 mb/s and since the card is advertised for $1550 and high ceiling read you’re not expecting that kind of shit sustained performance. It also has a weirdly worded sentence saying “Photo, HD Video, RAW 4K to 12K.” Super dodge.
@@conradtaylor9513I purchased both of my cards from CVP, a reputable store in the UK. I don't think my card was fake. Card failures seem quite common but not widely discussed. It wasn't just my card that had issues.
I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong but my ProGrade Cobalt 650GB, will happily take lossless RAW only (not RAW+JPG) photos in FX mode (46MP) at 20 shots/sec and never go below buffer "r017". I initially tested it with 800 shots continuous and just retested it with 300 shots. Manual focus so it's not set to focus release. Shots in focus so there's no issue with exceptional compression due to black frame/blurry mess. It's also worth noting that ProGrade (and Delkin?) advertise minimum sustained speed -- for PG Cobalt 650 it's 1400MB/s. My RAW files seem to go up to 65MB so.. 1300MB/s required for 20 shots per second (?)
What raw and jpeg format are you using?
Oh and I do these tests with af on.
@@mattgranger Lossless RAW only, but I figured out what's going on. For some reason for both AF and MF my Z9's only shooting just over 15 shots per second. Shutter speed of 1/100th, mode dial set to H, continuous shooting speed (high) set to 20... but when you look at the timestamp for the first image and the last image I'm getting ~1000 frames per 67 seconds (also checked by timing the burst manually). So ~15fps. I have no idea why.
@@mattgranger ...and further solved. Switching to 1/400th shutter allowed for actual 20 shots/sec and ~73 shots (lossless raw) before buffer expiry, a decent but not great showing. It's funny because I would have thought 1/100th shutter would allow 20 fps. I wonder where the breakpoint is.
Any word on the durability / longevity of the cards / warranty / data recovery of the cards i feel like that could be its own video
Yeah could be! I’ve recently had a big card failure, but it’s hard to pinpoint the reason :/
@@mattgranger I had that happen with angel bird.. hope ur issue gets resolved quickly** hopefully the Nikon cards hold up a little better I think that’s my next purchase
I currently have 2ea Delkin Power (not black) 128gb. They are a great, reasonably priced option. I haven’t tested 8k yet, but it does 4k fine. I’m mainly stills and it’ll do up to 82 frames or so before hitting the buffer, at 20fps lossless raw. I believe I was in the 720-760 frames range when using 120fps. Stays cooler than most as well.
But for all the lines, the performance can change a lot based on which size you choose. I don’t think the other Delkin powers are as good, and with Delkin black there is a size or 2 that isn’t that great too
Glad they’re working for you. FYI all cards will do normal 4K. If you want to compare to my test, it’s the prores 4.1k 60p I was testing as the lower format
As the Hoodman 128GB performed so well, would the 512GB model perform just as well? I am interested as it is much better value than the competition, at $0.78 per GB, but makes no claims about sustained write speeds.
ProGrade also offers a Cobalt 165GB 2-Pack which is $324, making it $0.98 per GB, a good value for those who prefer to have many smaller capacity cards.
Can’t say sorry. Some really do vary in performance - even the smaller wise ones are slower. I only mentioned larger prograde as I know they’re very similar to the 325. But I’ve not tested larger hoodman options
Nice light and image quality on this video. What did you shoot it on? Picture control settings?
It’s color graded, so I’m not sure that sharing our settings is much use 👍🏼 filmed on z9 and 50mm 1.8
Very helpful, but most Mirrorless cameras have a combination of CF Express and SD. In other to be cautious in case of card failure many photographers fill both slots to the issue is what is the right one of each of these in terms of the best speed
What about NX-B2PRO and in general Nextorage?
Stay away from Ritz Gear 256GB CFExpress type B they have connection problems with the D850. No problem with the Nikon recommended Lexar 256GB card.
Hi Matt. Great videos. Thanks for testing for us. There was someone saying on a video that Anglebird cards do not eject from slot 1 on the Z9 they get stuck. Have you experienced any problem ?
Yes. I find some are tight. I also had one fail and become unusable.
I love the shirt!
Hi Matt, been trying to download the updated sheet but all i get is the 2022 version ... :(
Did the 4TB Angelbird actually format to 4TB in camera? I didn't think the camera filesystem handled 4TB cards. Plus the capacity times you mentioned sound low.
Yes it works fine. A 1TB card gives you only 23.21 minutes of 8.3k recording.
Great stuff Matt ! I would love a comparison regarding reliability if it can be researched somehow (ex type of flash, controller, card construction, error correcting if existing etc)
Maybe it’s a bit too hard to research this type of stuff since the info it’s not available without some serious teardowns :)
Speed it’s important but i think reliability tops it.
For some use cases where you don’t need speed (stills only, landscapes, portraits, events etc) … reliability comes first :)
the angelbird SX has a sustainable write speed of ~800mb/s - considerably slower than their other options AT, pro etc...
Hi Matt
I just got a Delkin Black 512 CF express b card for my Nikon Z9
I cannot do a full format on the card
I can only do a quick format
All the other cards work fine doing both formats
Can you do a full format?
Is there some setting I am missing?
Thank you
Mauro
Hi mate, sorry I dont have that card handy to test.
Hi Matt - Is the Hoodman card a newer one (2nd generation) or is this the same one that they were selling for the last year and half or so?
I don't know how long they have been selling it - but its the one I linked to: bhpho.to/3RAiuGz
So helpful.. Thanks 👍🏼
what do you thing of pergear 2 tb?
Angelbird 160GB AV PRO CFexpress 2.0 Type B SX Memory Card c'est le meilleur rapport qualité prix
If that size works for you - its pretty great.
Any feedback on INDMEM brand ?
Never heard of it sorry
As a pleb, when the prices of the tripod and memory cards become more expensive then the camera, it might be time give film another go.
Has anyone had a Delkin 128GB typeB, come back and say, No system program on card? The card showed up, with the Files(for a sec), then the files disappeared. Card was sill there.
The cheapest card I’ve found is Angelbird AV PRO SE, 512gb, only $180
Thanks for the job and sharing but the prices are insane.
Put a 1 Tb SDD for half the price and shoot.
Another insane business
Seems most people are still unaware that CFexpress B Card Extender to M.2 NVMe SSD adapters exist 😕
I’m well aware and have a video uploaded to release soon. Do you use this set up? Which components?
Whole Video about results and for results you need to give you email and three generation names and surnames behind you. Then finally you get hell knows what. What a sales man. Matt the money maker.
Feel free to buy all the cards and do the testing yourself.
Or just take note of the results as I say them in video
Sar kindly please how much dollar price
? See the video or link below
Sooner or later they will put a SSD inside the cameras
Real meat with this one. As a new Z9 owner this was heavy on my mind. Thank you.
It doesn't pay to scrimp on cheap cards. I had one several years ago that would start corrupting files when it got half full. I bet Nikon isn't making those cards. I would bet one of the major companies are making them and putting Nikon's name on them.
Absolutely. Of course not everyone needs to pay for the fastest or biggest; I hope the test results will help people find what suits them best personally.
I do wonder about one thing. Yes, the card will be the bottleneck for clearing the buffer. But the Sony A1 can do 30fps (compressed) RAW at a similar resolution, with type A cards. So does it have a bigger internal buffer then? And if so, why did Nikon put a relatively small buffer in the Z9?
How many shots before the A1 is buffering? That's the real question. If it is getting similar results to the Z9, then I would guess it has a bigger buffer as the A1 cards are slower.
Yes no contest, the buffer is huge with cf b vs a
Recently got back into photography after a long break. Old SD cards were known to go bad randomly, with excessive use, or exposure to extreme cold or heat.
Are CFexpress B prone to same? I'd like to buy a larger card but have been sticking to 120gb size as I'm fearful cards will go bad or slow down with use.
Not in my experience.
@@mattgranger thanks for replying!
👍🏾🙏🏾
😮😮😮😮
Gosh Matt. Can you just put up a table of the performance of the cards and talk to it? Its time consuming to listen to bits here and there with no set structure and irrelevant comments like getting this card from so and so. I quit watching after jumping around and not finding what I want.
Grab the downloadable pdf
@@mattgranger Noted. Thanks.
trash bla-bla "test" that doesn't tell anything of Sandisk card.
I used Angelbird 4Tb CFexpress on the GH6 for 3 weeks 5.7k 30p Pro Res unlimited recording little over 2 hrs and reformatted each use flawlessly until the 2.0 update and encountered error this Cf express exceeds 2Tb.now useless. ANGELBIRD IVE NEVER HAD ANY ISSUES. They have stepped up to a problem that is not w ther card and working w me to solve the issue.
there is no point of speed and capacity if they become hot ! :( i tryed to burn all my cards th-cam.com/video/EWVtxtY9Y8o/w-d-xo.html