Sony Sets Speed Record with New SF-G UHS-II SD Card

Sony now holds the record for having the fastest SD-Card on the planet with their recently announced SF-G Series SD UHS-II Cards. These SF-G series cards have a read speeds of 300 MB/sec with a write speeds of 299 MB/sec. Photographers might have no need for SD cards with such speeds, even if using it for action photography but videographers especially those recording in ultra high resolution 4K or higher will not be bottlenecked by speed limitations.

These SF-G SD cards will be available in three capacities: 32GB, 64GB and 128GB and in addition to their performance, these are also waterproof, shockproof, temperature resistant, and also X-Ray proof. What’s weird is that Sony did not seem to get the memo that there are better speed labels available for fast UHS-II cards since the SF-G series label is using Speed class 10 and UHS speed class 3 marking instead of the new video speed class which better designates 4K and 8K video capability. The UHS speed class 3 marking is limited to 30MB/sec and only ideal for full HD/1080p video recording whereas the V90 speed classification for SD cards designates it as having 90MB/sec write speeds suitable for 8K video recording. With the extremely high speed of the SF-G series SD cards however, it looks like Sony might has well have created a new speed rating marker as it is at least 3x faster than the fastest speed class designation.

There are no official prices available yet for the US and UK market, but according to Sony Japan the 32GB model will retail for 15,000 Yen ($130 USD), the 64GB version will retail for around 25,000 Yen ($220 USD) and the 128GB model will cost 49,000 Yen ($400). A new USB 3.1 card reader called Sony USB W-S1 has also been released that can actually match the 300MB/s read speeds of these drives.