Best CFexpress Type B Cards of 2026

Of all the cards here, the ProGrade Gold is the one we stopped worrying about. It ran cool through long bursts, mounted and offloaded without that pause you get when a card is thinking harder than it should, and it never asked anything of us. Some of that is unglamorous engineering: ProGrade tunes these cards to draw less power from the camera, which keeps heat down and leaves more battery for the shoot.

The numbers are strong without being the strongest. Read speed is rated at 3,400MB/s and burst write at up to 3,000MB/s, with an 850MB/s sustained write figure that matches our top pick's. Burst write is where it gives away a little to the Nextorage and Delkin cards here; for stills, 4K and 6K you won't notice, and for sustained recording the figure that matters is identical.

What the extra money buys is a track record we trust. Across Nikon Z8 and Z9 bodies, Canon mirrorless and the odd D850, this is the card we've seen the least trouble from over the longest stretch. Pair that with 512GB, enough for a full wedding's stills plus the video, and the premium starts to look like reasonable insurance.

VPG400 is the least understood label on a memory card, and the one that matters most if you shoot cinema. It's a certification that the card will hold a sustained write of at least 400MB/s, and Delkin rates this Black version at 2,040MB/s sustained — five times that floor, and a number the company puts its name to rather than a burst figure that lasts three seconds.

That's what the money buys. In a Blackmagic body or a Canon cinema camera, or on a Z8 pushing 8K, the failure you're guarding against isn't a slow offload at midnight — it's the take that stops at the twenty-minute mark. The Black card is built around that: serialized for authenticity, waterproof and shockproof, and rated to keep writing where a burst figure alone tells you nothing.

We came away thinking of it as insurance. It's the most expensive card in this set and it isn't the quickest in a burst, and neither fact bothered us once, because the footage it protects is the footage you can't re-shoot. It's also the only card here that answers will this still be writing in twenty minutes with a number instead of a shrug.

Lexar built this one for the way cards actually live. The 4.0 Silver carries IP5X dust protection, a 5-meter drop rating, bend, shock and vibration resistance, and a wear-out rating the company puts at 12,000 cycles. That's a different pitch from most of this group, which competes almost entirely on speed.

It isn't slow, either. Lexar rates it at 3,600MB/s read and 3,000MB/s write, with a sustained write figure of 2,600MB/s — the highest sustained rating in this set on paper, ahead of the VPG400 card. The distinction worth holding onto is that Delkin's number is certified and Lexar's is a rating, so treat the gap as smaller than it looks.

To get near those numbers you need a 4.0 reader; in a 2.0 reader the card works but runs at 2.0 speeds, which is true of every 4.0 card here. The ruggedness, by contrast, needs nothing else — no accessories, no firmware, no upgrade path.

Where it earns its place for us is the warranty. A limited lifetime term on a card that gets pulled hot from a camera every day is the sort of promise you only test once, and it's why this one stays in the bag rather than the drawer.

Delkin's 48-hour replacement guarantee is the reason to look at this card before the spec sheet. If a Power card fails, the company ships a replacement within two business days, before it receives the dead one back. For anyone who can't sit out a shoot week, that's worth more than another couple of hundred megabytes per second, and we rate it the best-supported card in this group.

The specs are no compromise: 3,650MB/s read, 3,240MB/s write, and an 820MB/s sustained write figure that sits just under the top two cards here. In practice it behaved like the rest of the 4.0 group — bursts cleared, clips recorded, the card warmed and carried on.

What it lacks is a certified sustained floor, so cinema shooters who need VPG400 step up to the Black version. For everyone else it's a near-flagship card with a lifetime warranty and the least anxious support terms in this guide.

The PERGEAR Master Series is the lowest-priced 512GB 4.0 card in this group, and the numbers don't read like a budget compromise: 3,500MB/s read, 3,400MB/s write, and a compatibility list naming the Canon R5 and C500 Mark III, the Nikon Z8 and Z9, and the Ronin 4D.

We've been impressed by what it delivers for the money and honest about what we can't yet say. PERGEAR is a newer name than Lexar, SanDisk or ProGrade, and the long-term picture is the open question — nothing we saw suggested a problem, we simply have less history to lean on. What we can judge is the performance, and it kept pace with cards fetching considerably more.

The warranty term isn't stated anywhere on the product page, which is the one thing worth confirming before you order. If it comes back as a proper multi-year term, this is the best value in the guide on paper, and the card that makes 512GB of 4.0 speed affordable.

SanDisk's Extreme PRO is the card a lot of photographers already own, and that's most of its appeal. It's a known name with a limited lifetime warranty, RescuePRO Deluxe recovery software in the box, and a compatibility record stretching across Canon R5, Nikon Z6 and D850 bodies.

The fine print is where this one gets interesting. The 1,400MB/s write figure that circulates for the Extreme PRO line belongs to the 512GB card; this 128GB version is rated at 1,700MB/s read and 1,200MB/s write. That's honest 2.0 performance, and it's worth knowing before you buy on a headline you read about a different capacity.

For stills and 4K on a camera like an R5 or a Z6 II, that's plenty — the card doesn't get in the way, and the recovery software is the kind of thing you're glad to have on the day a card won't mount.

Our take: buy it when you want a 128GB card you never think about, or when your camera is a 2.0 body that can't use the extra speed anyway. Don't buy it for 8K, and don't expect a bargain per gigabyte — the 512GB cards here give you four times the capacity for a little more money.

The number that decides whether the SUNEAST card is right for you is buried in its specs: a sustained write of 150MB/s. The 550MB/s burst write and 1,500MB/s read look fine next to 2.0 cards, but the sustained figure is what you get once the buffer empties, and it isn't enough for 8K or long high-bitrate 4K clips.

For stills it's a different story. In a D850, a Z7 II, or as the spare that lives in your bag, it mounts, writes and offloads without fuss, and the five-year warranty matches our top pick's. It's also the least expensive way into a Type B slot in this guide, which matters when you're buying a second card rather than a primary one.

Our read is that it's a stills card wearing a video card's label. As a second card for photographs, the price is hard to argue with; as primary media on a video shoot, it isn't the one.