Lexar's new SD 8.0 card is fast, but no devices fully support it

[Shawn Knight]

In a nutshell: Lexar recently announced a handful of cutting-edge mobile storage products including the world's first SD card constructed of 316 stainless steel. Another card in Lexar's new product lineup is attracting attention for its blazing fast performance, but it's not something buyers will be able to take advantage of right away... or maybe, ever.

The Lexar Professional Gold Pro SDXC Express card is SD 8.0 certified and according to Lexar, is capable of reaching read speeds of up to 1,700 MB/s and writes up to 1,000 MB/s. That's over five times faster than SD 4.0 cards but as PetaPixel highlights, there's one small problem.

The card is based on the SD 8.0 standard, which was first announced by the SD Association in mid-2020 as SD Express. The publication notes that the standard was essentially dead upon arrival due to a lack of support, and remains that way. Indeed, no devices available today support SD 8.0 meaning buyers will be unable to realize the card's full potential.

Lexar's latest is backward compatible with existing SD card devices, but only to UHS-I class. As Kingston highlights, UHS-I has a maximum transfer speed up to 104 MB/s (and that's just theoretical).

Lexar hasn't announced pricing or availability for the Professional Gold Pro SDXC Express card, and there's no product page to speak of. PetaPixel doubts the card will ever make it to market, and they are probably not wrong. A Lexar 800 MB/s SD Express card announced back in 2021 never surfaced, either.

The publication offers a hard pill to swallow for SD Express hopefuls: widespread adoption is a pipe dream that's probably never going to happen. "This specification is and always has been too broken and flawed to be adopted."

If you're in the market for a fast memory card and your device supports it, CFexpress is the way to go. Lexar and others offer plenty of speedy CFexpress cards across a range of price points and capacities. There's also the newly announced Pro Diamond CFexpress 4.0 Type B Card, with read speeds up to 3,700 MB/s and writes up to 3,400 MB/s.

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Lexar's new SD 8.0 card is fast, but no devices fully support it

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Appalling they would try and con consumers in this way, but it is a common practice that governments allow al the time.

 

[VariableSpike]

Classic sleazy marketing, technically correct and lets them use the big shiny numbers on the product as it still works, just not as fast, but they full well know no customer will actually be able to make it go that fast, all for the name of more profit

 

[ZedRM]

A dead format? Some believe so

And "some" need to lay off the drugs. I use SD cards daily and a lot people do the same.

 

[RaXelliX]

And "some" need to lay off the drugs. I use SD cards daily and a lot people do the same.

I think he meant specifically the SD Express, not the SD card physical size itself.
Indeed the adoption of faster speeds has been abysmal for even UHS-II, UHS-III and SD Express for four years running with no products.

 

[ZedRM]

I think he meant specifically the SD Express, not the SD card physical size itself.
Indeed the adoption of faster speeds has been abysmal for even UHS-II, UHS-III and SD Express for four years running with no products.

Specific definitions were not used in their statement. Not sure why, don't care why.