Tech Tuesday: SanDisk Launches World's Fastest SD Card

With increasingly higher performance cameras, faster continuous shooting speeds and the growing availability of 4K video, we’re all feeling the need for speed from our media cards. Announced a few years after its UHS-I is SanDisk’s new Extreme PRO SD UHS-II card, and although it isn’t the first UHS-II compliant card on the market, it’s certainly the fastest.

You’ll get up to 250MBs write speeds for continuous burst mode shooting–JPEG and RAW–and transfer speeds of up to 280MBs. On the video side, the card is up to the task for 4K, 3D and HD video thanks to its UHS Speed Class 3 (U3) specification. That means the card is capable of sustained video capture of up to 30MBs.

Technology is sometimes a chicken/egg proposition, with one part of the equation leapfrogging the other. Such is the case with UHS-II. At this point–and as far as we know–the only camera on the market today that’s UHS-II compatible is the 16 megapixel Fujifilm XT-1 But we’re sure that other cameras will follow suit, so it’s good to be prepared.

Along with the Extreme PRO SD UHS-II, SanDisk has also announced a companion card reader–the SanDisk Extreme PRO SD UHS-II Card Reader/Writer. This compact device is the first SDHC/SDXC UHS-II card reader/writer and, with its USB 3.0 interface offers up to 500MBs transfer times. According to SanDisk, that’s about 10 times faster than USB 2.0.

SanDisk Extreme PRO memory cards come with a lifetime limited warranty as well as a one-year downloadable offer for RescuePRO Deluxe recovery software (just in case you accidentally delete some of your images from the card). The SanDisk UHS-II cards range in capacity from 16GB to 64GB, with MSRP’s of $120-$300 (street prices are, of course, lower). The card reader has an MSRP of $50. Pre-orders for the card and reader can be placed now at  SanDisk and both products are slated to ship in April.

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