Wise breaks every CFexpress record with its latest Type B cards
(Image credit: Wise)
Another week, another claim to the title of world's fastest CFexpress card! This time the coveted accolade goes to Wise, and its CFexpress 4.0 Type B PRO Mk-II cards. Headline speed figures are 3700MB/s read, 3600MB/s write, and 3000MB/s sustained write, making this the fastest ever type B card across the board. For comparison, the previous record-holder was Lexar's Professional CFexpress 4.0 Type B DIAMOND Series card, which topped out at 3600MB/s read and 3300MB/s write.
The new Wise Type B card achieves these incredible speeds thanks to its ultra-fast pSLC NAND flash chips and PCIe Gen 4 x2, NVMe 1.4 interface. Two capacity options are available - 1.3TB and 660GB - both with the same speed ratings, costing US$1,799.99 and $969.99, respectively.
While such bleeding-edge performance is undoubtedly impressive from a technical perspective, we do question whether it's really necessary for real world usage. As it stands, even first-gen (CFexpress 2.0) Type B cards are still more than fast enough for 4K-60 and 8K-30 recording, making all CFexpress 4.0 Type B cards with their 3000+ MB/s performance completely unnecessary from a practical standpoint, at least for the foreseeable future.
The previous Type B speed champ, Lexar's CFexpress 4.0 Type B DIAMOND card (Image credit: Lexar)
The new capacity record holder is the 4 terabyte CFX4-B4096M2 card. Now, it is true that there are no other cards that offer a higher capacity, but there is already a 4TB card on the market. Angelbird's 4TB AV Pro MK2 Type B card (also rebranded by RED) can boast the same capacity, but it's an older CFexpress 2.0 design, topping out at 1785MB/s read speed. Angelbird also only certifies its 4TB card compatible with just the Nikon Z8, Z9, and a handful of cinema cameras.
Where the new Wise card can make a case for itself is it's the first 4TB CFexpress 4.0 Type B offering, and is therefore almost twice as fast as the Angelbird card, with a 3500MB/s max read speed. Its other speed credentials are also nearly double the speed of the Angelbird card, as Wise quotes a max write speed of 3000MBs and a minimum 2400MB/s sustained write rate - all very impressive numbers such a high capacity Type B card.
Of course such a card is never going to be cheap, and consequently the CFX4-B4096M2 carries an RRP of US$1,859.99. However, considering the much slower Angelbird 4TB AV Pro MK2 Type B card is still $1,799.99, Wise's pricing seems quite reasonable. If you're on a tighter budget, Wise also offers a 2TB version with the same read/write speeds for $999.99, though at this price it's considerably more than other existing 2TB CFexpress 4.0 cards capable of similar performance.
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Expect availability of all four newly announced Wise Type B cards at the end of May.
(Image credit: Wise)
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Ben is the Imaging Labs manager, responsible for all the testing on Digital Camera World and across the entire photography portfolio at Future. Whether he's in the lab testing the sharpness of new lenses, the resolution of the latest image sensors, the zoom range of monster bridge cameras or even the latest camera phones, Ben is our go-to guy for technical insight. He's also the team's man-at-arms when it comes to camera bags, filters, memory cards, and all manner of camera accessories – his lab is a bit like the Batcave of photography! With years of experience trialling and testing kit, he's a human encyclopedia of benchmarks when it comes to recommending the best buys.
