Lexar Pro 300X CF Cards – Giveaway and Review

Got the need for speed?  These new Lexar cards are just insanely fast.  I got a few of these recently to give away on the LDP contest series over on Flickr (which is underway now by the way).  It was actually a set of three, but a review was in order, so one of the three got opened for testing.

With a box labeled 45 MB/sec, I was pretty surprised – my camera (at it’s best, can capture about 12 MB of data in a raw plus jpg setup (technically 13.5, but let’s average this out).  So, with a max frame rate of 12MB x 6sec I could write up to 72 MB per second in ideal conditions.  Can I really slam this card against the wall in a mere second?  I tried, and it actually kept pace with me for about 3 or 4 seconds before starting to buffer – that’s 300MB of data in the blink of an eye!  I was impressed!

To top things off, this is even faster than their previous generations of professional grade cards (which were 133x), and the testing Lexar does to their stuff is absolutely amazing.  I saw this video over on YouTube of their process and must say that I don’t think I would ever abuse a card like this

But then again, I am not known for shooting in deserts, iced mountains, or bending my cards in unusual ways.  Wait a second, I did visit RMNP in the dead of winter, shoot White Pocket in some rather ghastly heat, and there’s been a number of times when filled cards have found their way into my back pocket, the washer, the dryer, and been subjected to quite a bit of use and… yeah, ok, perhaps I have abused these cards!

I own a couple brands of cards, including a Lexar 133x 8GB, 2 Sandisk 2 Gb, one Ridata 2GB, and an emergency backup card of the Transcend 1GB card.  And the one that is in my camera most often is the Lexar 8GB card.  It holds the most data, yes, but by the same token, it also has seen the most abuse.  I have yet to have a failure with it.  While the newer 300x card has not seen the same rigors of field tests, that is now the second card in my stack and the others will likely never see the light of day again.

Truth be told, yes, I have abused all of these cards, but for some reason the Lexars’ have been at the forefront of my media pocket for a while now, so I guess this is my official endorsement of the Lexar Media!  They have yet to fail me from 4 years of use and abuse.  For some sample images of shots taken with the Lexar card – check out the recent  subject montage of “Tail Lights” I did just a few weeks ago.  No errors, no wackiness – just solid, stable, durable and reliable cards – each and every time!

Having said all the positives – there are some “wishful thinking” items of interest as well.  The EyeFi technology that has found its way into the SD line of products is something I really wish was readily available in the CF line.  I get tired of carrying around a card reader with me, and an EyeFi technology would really make that a lot easier for me.

The other “downside” I guess is the UDMA functionality – but that’s not really on Lexar – I just wish my lowly 40D could keep up with that technology – it would makae write speeds even faster!  (For those who don’t know, UDMA stands for Ultra Direct Memory Access, and there’s a great Wikipedia article on the subject here, which better explains why UDMA is faster than it’s predecessors…)

Want your chance to win 2 of the 4 GB 300x Pro cards?  Post a photo to the Flickr thread before the end of the month!  Thanks to Lexar for the contribution (worth almost $150 retail), and good luck to all!

(ETA:  And if the 300x speed still isn’t fast enough for you, Lexar just announced their new flagship line of 600x speed cards – check out this video too for more details on that – absolutely amazing!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpNw5yVPhLg&feature=related !)

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