Introduction

If you asked me to name one brand that has become synonymous with portable storage—especially for content creators—in 2022, I would name Lexar without hesitation. The company has been around for over two decades now, steadily rising from a startup, to buying out other brands, strengthening its market share and product portfolio. Indeed, TechPowerUp itself has reviews of Lexar RAM and SSDs, of both the internal and external variety, but the earliest coverage of the brand consisted of reviews of Lexar memory cards and card readers. Soon after, we published a press release about Lexar’s latest entry to the CFexpress memory card world, and I thought this was a good time to see exactly how that particular market has been evolving over the years.

If you are looking at the word “CFexpress” and wondering what that means, then perhaps this article is more enlightening than one helping you make a purchase decision. CFexpress is the latest standard from the CompactFlash association—the organisation behind the famous Compact Flash (CF) memory cards that dominated the prosumer and professional camera market for years as the default memory card format. Indeed, one of my daily driver cameras still uses a CF card, and it’s lasted the test of time for durability and consistency. The issue is that those original cards have not kept up with the increased storage bandwidth now available to end users with alternatives, and they are bulkier than what mirrorless cameras prefer. CFexpress is the current solution to this, and it comes in three versions/sizes: Type A, Type B, and Type C. This makes CFexpress analogous to SD cards wherein we have microSD, miniSD, and full-size SD Cards. Today, we take a look at Lexar’s CFexpress Type A GOLD Series, thanks to the company for providing a test sample to TechPowerUp!

Packaging and Accessories

Lexar sent over not only the CFexpress Type A GOLD series memory card itself, but also the accompanying card reader that launched alongside it. The former especially was so new that the provided sample did not even have retail packaging available at the time of shipping, and I was happy to take up Lexar’s offer of a couple of photos when it was ready shortly before this article was written up. This is fairly standard retail packaging you would see in a brick-and-mortar store and goes well with the GOLD series name, owing to the black and gold color scheme employed. On the front is the Lexar logo and product name, we also find out this is part of the Lexar Professional lineup. A render of the card is seen here too, along with the exact memory size and salient technical features. This continues on the back, in multiple languages, and inside the cardboard packaging will be the plastic clamshell that I have here. It hosts the memory card itself. There may eventually be some paperwork inside too, but I can’t speak about this here.

The card reader, on the other hand, is ready for retail, as evidenced by the product box that arrived along with the memory card itself. Here too we see Lexar use a similar design with the company logo and product name, a render of the product in use, and relevant features on the front. There is confirmation of the product being a dual card reader supporting not only CFexpress Type A, but also full-size SD cards too. Opening the box reveals a plastic clamshell with a clear plastic cover over it, and two compartments to hold the items of interest. The larger of the two has the card reader itself, then at the bottom we find the necessary cable to connect it to your PC. This is a relatively short cable that goes from USB Type-C to Type-A, although I did like that the Type-A section is an adapter in itself that converts the native Type-C connector on the source end too. Props to Lexar for doing this captive adapter implementation and not making me worry about potentially losing it somewhere.

Closer Look and Testing

The Lexar Professional CFexpress Type A/SD card reader was made with the CFexpress Type A card in mind, and is a USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface device, where that Type-C to Type-C (w/Type-A adapter) now makes a lot more sense. It comes in at 60 x 98 x 19 mm and weighs just over 75 g, making it fairly portable for on-the-move content creators. The card reader employs a metal and plastic composition with an iridescent finish applied on the metal top that allows for multiple colors to shine off the surface with the Lexar logo on the top, as seen above. A ribbed texture surrounds it, providing a grippy surface to hold on to, more of this continues on the bottom with a rubber non-slip base too. Below the logo on the front is an indicator LED, but otherwise the I/O is on the shorter sides where we will also find the expected Type-C port itself. I would prefer these active surfaces did not have a glossy finish, given they can be dust and fingerprint magnets, but they’re at least, thankfully, quite easy to wipe and clean.

The Type-C connection provides for up to 10 Gbps transfer speeds with a compatible source, which in practice would give you ~1000 Mbps either direction off the USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports. This will be especially handy on the CFexpress Type A slot that also maxes out to the 1000 Mbps data transfer speeds supported. I appreciate the two slots come marked accordingly, although for the sake of this article I will be mostly focusing on the CFexpress slot itself, simply mentioning that the SD card slot supports UHS-II cards with transfer speeds of up to 312 Mbps. The provided memory card can be seen here too, now you see why the CFexpress Type A card is becoming increasingly popular in smaller form factor cameras and even some higher-end drones. The Type A standard takes up about the same room as a full-size SD card itself, thus allowing for the likes of Sony with its a7S III and A1 cameras to employ it, rather than the more popular CFexpress Type B that is the same size and pin layout as the XQD format. Type B cards are larger thus at 38.5 x 29.6 x 3.8 mm, and support PCIe Gen 3×2 interfaces for up to 2000 Mbps transfer speeds to where you will see them used more in prosumer cameras these days. Type C is too large for camera work, likely ending up being more an external storage/laptop memory device itself.

The Lexar Professional CFexpress Type A GOLD series uses a plastic core that then gets a metal cover plate given a beaded finish on both the front and back. This helps not only with aesthetics but adds to the durability aspect given the card is rated for shock resistance, tiny plastic nibs on the side add to this feature. On the front is the Lexar Professional branding again, and the storage capacity is placed at the very top, avoiding confusion. The sticker matches the GOLD series moniker well enough, and overall I am happy with the build quality of the card. Lexar does not provide any sort of IP rating here, presumably expecting cameras to instead have weather seals, but the operating temperature range of -10 °C to 70 °C is enough to suggest there shouldn’t be an issue with daily operation in testing conditions.

Inserting the CFexpress Type A card into the respective slot in the card reader is simple enough, with those plastic nibs acting as guides, orienting the card properly. You then press in till it clicks into the slot itself, before simply connecting the card reader to a compatible USB 3.2 Gen 2 slot on your PC using the provided cable. I found myself using the Type-C connector with an available front USB port on the case itself, although most end users are likely to see this on the motherboard. Either way, given the shorter cable length overall, I expect you will make use of the rubberized base and place the card reader on top of the PC case itself. You get native support with Windows XP and newer, with the card reader also being backwards compatible back to USB 2.0 as needed. It also supports macOS 10.8 and newer for those who prefer Apple.

In addition to using the card on a Sony a7s III to test and confirm the Type A bandwidth limits aren’t an issue—I had no problems recording 4K/120 FPS videos, for example—I had to then shoot a bunch of RAW + JPG images to generate a lot of individual files of varying sizes. If the camera was limited to UHS-II SD cards, I would certainly have had some buffer issues. I never missed my own camera with CFexpress Type B cards, but keep in mind that I didn’t do any 8K HFR + HDR shooting. As it stands, I have no problems with the “slower” Type A cards as long as they hold up over time. The limited lifetime warranty provided by Lexar here does help quell my doubts though.

Next I had to see how the card and card reader combination worked together, seen above are some quick tests to verify we get the advertised 900 Mbps read/800 Mbps write speeds here. These are best-case sequential transfer speeds that I easily met and even exceeded doing file transfers, and the more photography/videography centric Blackmagicdesign benchmark noted slightly lower numbers that suffice for pretty much everything I’d do myself. I do acknowledge CFexpress Type B cards being more popular though, and it’s not just pure performance that made them the overall preference for camera manufacturers. No, it’s because these Type A cards are limited in storage capacities owing to their physical size. I have here the 160 GB version of the Lexar Professional CFexpress Type A GOLD series, which also comes in 80 GB sizes. Sony, the other main player in this memory card format, also offers 80/160 GB cards only—with lower rated transfer speeds—so those needing larger capacities have no other Type A options. Then there’s also the fact these cards get quite warm under heavy use, as seen from this specific sample going from 54 °C to 85 °C in a 20 °C ambient, but thankfully not enough to limit data being recorded to the cards.

There’s a lot to like about the Lexar offering in the CFexpress Type A market, probably due to us finally getting more options! Having used Sony offerings thus far, I have zero hesitation about telling you to get the less expensive and better performing Lexar GOLD series instead. Indeed, you can get the card—$199.99 (80 GB) or $399.99 (160 GB) from the likes of Amazon, Adorama or B&H along with the card reader for an additional $80 and still be under the Sony equivalent pricing, depending on your region. These CFexpress Type A cards are not for everyone, but Lexar’s held up to its claims of being the fastest, and there are certainly some customers who absolutely need them for their specific cameras, who can now be rest assured that these come highly recommended by me.