There are some very good reasons why photographers are switching over to Exascend. However, there was a problem that made me delay this article. Here's why.
My Earlier Mistake
Do you love photography? I do and if you are reading this, then I guess that you do. What about the gear you use to take photographs? Do you have an affinity for those too? Over the years, I’ve had a lot of stuff: cameras, tripods, batteries, flashes, bags, and memory cards, and one thing I have discovered it is worth paying more for quality. Not only is higher quality gear more pleasurable to use, but it also adds a feeling of reassurance that the gear won't fail at a critical moment. It lasts much longer too.
Historically, I used to wait for the Black Friday special deals to buy the most popular brand of SD cards from their Amazon store.
They were good while they worked, but I always kept a big stock of them because the phrase “while they worked” was very important. I would end up throwing two or three away each year because they failed. Some fell apart, others would become read-only, and more still would suddenly become corrupted, requiring formatting before being readable on my computer. I was grateful for the double card slots in my camera when one card died during a wedding shoot.
It seems to be a common problem with a lot of photography gear that the most popular brands rest on their laurels and allow quality to drop. I've seen it happen before with popular brands of cameras and tripods. Making a quick profit suddenly becomes more important than a long-term reputation.
Switching to Exascend
For some time now I have been using the Exascend brand of SD cards. I was originally sent a couple to test and that converted me to the brand. So, my recent mid-winter visit to Finland was an ideal opportunity to put the cards through their paces. The -30 C temperature was beyond the working parameters of most gear, and a little bit lower than the minimum operating temperature of the cards.
Although I have some of the Exascend SDXC UHS-II 128 GB V90 cards with me, the model that I reviewed back in June last year, I also took along some new Exascend SDXC UHS-II 256 GB V60 cards, which I used for most of the time I was there. I had high hopes that I would be as impressed.
The cards arrive in a neat cardboard box. A plastic tray with a strong, relatively voluminous case with the SD card inside was within that.
Card Speed
Ignoring their memory capacity difference, the V60 cards are not quite as fast as the V90s. However, unless you are shooting 8K video, that minimum speed difference won't affect you at all. Indeed, I fired off 120 raw frames a second using my camera, and, with both types of card, I could shoot for around 4 seconds before the buffer started to fill and the speed of shooting slowed. Even then, the camera was quickly ready for another burst. So, for most photographers, the V60 cards are a perfect choice, not least because they cost less.
The cards have a theoretical read speed of 280 MB/s and a write speed of 180 MB/s. So I put them into a new, empty card into a card reader, plugged it into a USB-3 socket of my computer, and ran tests using CrystalDiskMark. I was getting read speeds of 292.75 MB/s and write speeds of 200.5 mb/s, which is in line with the test results that I requested from Exascend. The V90 card was faster with read speeds of around 310MB/s and write speeds of around 296MB/s.
V90 and V60 refer to the minimum write speed. That means the cards are guaranteed to write faster than that. 4K video will require that V60 minimum of 60 MB/s write speed, or it may start to drop frames. It was always well above that and with very boring test recordings of me sitting typing this article, no frames were lost.
What Is UHS-II?
When you look at the back of a standard SD card, you will see a row of pins. A UHS-II card has a second row below these. The technology of UHS-II allows much faster read and write speeds. They are backward compatible and will still work in UI and Class 10 standard devices and at the maximum read and write speed of that device.
Build Quality
As I mentioned, I have been using the Exascend Catalyst UHS II V90 cards and they have so far not skipped a beat. Furthermore, they have had a lot of abuse. One of the cards I accidentally left in a trouser coin pocket and it went through a washing machine cycle at 60 C; it still works. That’s not a test I would recommend. However, the cards are waterproof, dust-resistant, climate-hardened, impact-resistant, X-ray-safe, and magnet-proof.
As I mentioned earlier, I took these cards with me and pushed them beyond their theoretical minimum operating temperature of -25° C. I then dropped the washed one from my upstairs window onto the concrete surface of my backyard and rubbed it over a very powerful magnet. Sadly, I didn’t have access to an X-ray machine to try, but after the robust testing, the card and its images were fine.
The card's casing is much more robust than those I used to use; it doesn’t easily flex like the other brand's. The lock switch’s operation is solid and changing between the two positions happens with the right amount of resistance and a solid click that even I can hear despite my hearing loss. The well-used, 10-month-old Exascend V90 versions still have the same feel to the switch.
Supply of Stock
I mentioned in the title that there was an issue. The publication of this article was delayed because the V60 cards were sold out at B&H, marked as temporarily out of stock. It seemed a bit odd to review a card and our readers are unable to buy them. Happily, they are available again now.
Specifications
- Card Type: SDXC
- Storage Capacity: 128 GB
- Bus Type: UHS-II
- Speed Class: 10
- UHS Speed Class: U3
- Video Speed Class: V60
- Read Speed: Maximum: 280 MB/s
- Write Speed: Maximum: 100 MB/s
- Minimum: 60 MB/s
- Operating Temperature: 7 to 117°F / -25 to 85°C
- Storage Temperature : -49 to 194°F / -45 to 90°C
- Built-in Write-Protect Switch
What I Liked and What Could Be Improved
What I Liked
This card checks all the boxes.
- Fast.
- Reliable.
- Robust build.
- Well-protected against environmental extremes.
- An ethical company that promotes equality. 50% of the employees are women.
What Could Be Improved
We are compelled to add this section to all our reviews, but when something works as well as this, it’s hard to say anything negative.
- As with all camera products, I wish the packaging had no single-use plastic.
- A space on the label to number the card would be welcome.
- The stock had sold out at B&H.
Conclusion
As photographers are becoming increasingly discerning about the quality of the equipment they buy, they are realising that you get what you pay for. It’s usually a false economy buying cheap gear, as I discovered with the popular card brand I previously used.
Although Exascend probably isn’t yet a household name, it deserves to be. It is a quality brand that has products approved for use by RED. The combination of performance, build quality, and reliability in extreme conditions made it my first choice of memory card, and it will continue to be. Next time you need to replace or upgrade your SD cards, I would highly recommend looking at Exascend
You can buy the Exascend Catalyst UHS II V60 cards by clicking or tapping here.
The Exascend Catalyst UHS II V90 cards are available by clicking here.
The full range of Exascend cards, including CF Express cards, are available here.
--- "4K video will require that V60 minimum of 60 MB/s write speed"
Not necessarily. Footage (video/photo) is captured to buffer, then buffer writes to card. So there's a lot of allowance for card speed. Recording at 4K 30p 100M, both my Sony a7iii and a9 are fine with UHS-I V30 so long as the card is larger than 32 gb.
For most cameras, when recording, the default behavior is to stop recording and display an error if the buffer fills beyond an arbitrary value set by the manufacturer. If you have a cheap old card, many modern cameras will stop recording after a few seconds, even if they have a large buffer. That is to ensure that a user doesn't encounter an issue with a slowly filling buffer that leads to issues when they are 5-10 minutes into a recording (it would be horrible for a camera with 4GB of RAM to wait until the memory fills before complaining about the card).
Some cards can run into dropped frame issues if their performance is sporadic, which is common with counterfeit cards, especially if they will silently drop IOs.
If a card can sustain a minimum of 30MB/s then basically any recording at under 240Mbps (including overhead) will be fine.
Hard to tell how much of a buffer modern cameras maintain, but I think with the old canon cameras (when the magic lantern firmware was useful), they would buffer about 0.5 -1 second worth of video as a FIFO and write to the card, and with the point and shoot and CHDK days, it was common for cameras to buffer around 5-10 frames of video.
--- "Hard to tell how much of a buffer modern cameras maintain"
My guess is pretty large; or more than large enough. At least with Sony. I record simultaneously to two card slots, stills and video, with different speeds, UHS-II and USH-I. Whatever it does and however it does, it's able to manage both.