All hail the new CFexpress Type B speed and capacity kings
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.
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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.
Expect availability of all four newly announced Wise Type B cards at the end of May.
