Lexar Professional SDXC 64GB card review

Lexar recently announced SDXC cards with large capacities, including 64GB and 128GB. Just a few years back one would buy a 2GB SD card and think this would be all you needed.

But digital photography is jumping, with DSLR getting more affordable every day, and file sizes growing with it. Fine high-resolution pictures can use anything from 3MB to 5MB, or even more with higher resolution cameras. Or if you are a serious photography enthusiast then storing those images in RAW format will see your camera creating even larger files.

Add to this the popularity of small HD video cameras and the requirements for digital image storage space grows quickly.

Up until recently SDHC was the standard. While it was possible to create SDHC cards with up to 2TB (terabytes) partitions, the standard limited those to 32GB (gigabytes). The newer SDXC format was unveiled in 2009, with support for file structures with support to up 2TB.

The Lexar Professional SDXC 64GB 133x came pre-formatted with Microsoft's own exFAT system, which is the standard for these cards, although you can easily reformat it to any other file system that support a block device. This includes ext2, HFS Plus, NTFS, UFS. You can easily format the card with older file systems, limited to the maximum allowed structures though.

Even though the SD 3.0 standard allows for ultra fast speeds of up to 832 Mbps, in reality we can't find devices that can actually transfer at that speed, limited by their interfaces.





The Lexar Professional SDXC 64GB box announces it as a 133x speed card. I did a quick comparison with other SD cards I have here, including a Kingston 1GB SD, a Pretec 1GB SD 133x. As expected the Lexar Professional 64GB 133x came up with numbers similar to those you can get from other 133x cards.


Lexar Professional SDXC 64GB 133x test results


Pretec SD 1GB 133x test results

The main advantage here doesn't seem to be the speed, but obviously the convenience of having such large storage in a single small card. This is even more noticeable when recording video in HD with modern cameras.

Pros
- Large storage capacity.
- Out of the box ready to use with modern DSLR and video HD cameras.
- Windows-compatible file system, but can be reformatted to use with other systems.
- Image Rescue 4.0 software available on-line.

Cons
- At NZ$386 for the 64GB model, pricing still accessible to professionals only or high end enthusiasts.
- Not all cameras are SDXC compatible. You must use a modern DSLR or upgrade firmware on old DSLRs.