Fastest CFexpress Cards Nikon Z9

To maximize the full potential of the Nikon Z9, you’ll need the fastest CFexpress memory cards on the market. Not only do they need to be fast, but they also need fast minimum write speeds with good consistency.

Use this guide to find the best CFexpress cards for the Nikon Z9.

Be sure to also read through the benchmarks and methodology, I share some of my notes which are important since CFexpress cards can be a little finicky.

Nikon Z9 – Amazon / Adorama / B&H

Also, see my Accessory List For The Nikon Z9.

Z8 Shooters – Since the Z8 is a little more prosumer-focused and is attracting a different audience, I’ve built a guide that breaks things down the different brands of cards with a little more detail, you can find in the Nikon Z8 Memory Card Guide.

Fastest Memory Cards Nikon Z9

The latest generation of CFexpress cards has improved dramatically with thermal throttling and minimum sustained write speeds in the Nikon Z9. However, the Z9 is still a little picky about cards and since it has a small buffer, you’ll want a card with good consistency vs top speed.

Here is what you need to know:

The Nikon Z9 can take dual CFexpress Type B memory cards with no restrictions on size.

You want a card with a high sustained write speed. Not all brands list this in their specs.

The Nikon Z9 can shoot video bitrates up to around 500MBs and a lot of cards, and most older CFexpress cards cannot sustain these speeds. I’ve tested most of the relevant bands to see what works for 8k NRAW video and here are the results.

Recommended Memory Cards Nikon Z9

Most of the new higher-end cards are able to record 8k RAW in the Nikon Z9. Just not Sony or Sandisk right now.

Videographers will want to look at the Lexar Gold cards, they are very fast, stay cool (relative to some of the other brands), and come in 2TB sizes.

The Lexar Diamond is probably the absolute best card right now in terms of features. It is one of the fastest cards, is VGP 400 certified, and is XQD backward compatibility which makes it a great choice if you’re still using older XQD cameras. I also rate the Lexar reader as the best right now.

There are also a few different versions of the Delkin Black cards, the 150GB size variants, and the 128GB variants. I didn’t see a noticeable difference in performance or speed between them and they were all able to run NRAW without an issue, but the Delkin 150GB variants typically behave a little more consistently than the 128GB varients in different tests.

*There are a lot of new cards since this test. Lexar Gold has all been updated. Prograde is now doing Gen 3. Try to get Gen3 Prograde if you go that route, otherwise, Lexar is hands down going to be the best right now. Also, Delkin would be a good second or third choice. But right now, it’s Lexar Diamond or Gold as the no-brainer best option.

Warning For AngelBird Cards: I removed AngelBird from the recommendations. For one they get too hot, they also are also often a little too thick, and are often times difficult to remove. This is also the case with OWC cards.

Nikon Z9 Benchmarks

In-camera tests to show which cards support RAW 8k 60p recording as well as in-camera speed tests.

Testing Method

For the in-camera benchmarks, a series of continuous bursts were taken until the buffer was filled. The time it took to clear the buffer was recorded and calculated against how much data was written. The Z9 doesn’t record uncompressed RAW, it uses a compressed RAW format.

For the video recording benchmarks, I shot NRAW at 8k60p for around 5 minutes on each card or until the card filled if it was a smaller card. I did a few different things in order to max the file sizes by forcing the camera to record the highest bitrate possible. I started by recording very busy landscapes of trees blowing in the wind against a blue sky, then I would also record a very busy computer screen with a lot of changing colors.

To see how the memory cards function under high heat or with a Thunderbolt 3 reader, check out this guide to CFexpress Type-B Memory Cards.

RAW Recording Modes

Lossless Compression – A clean compression of the images, with no information removed.

Files are large, expect about 80 shots or more with the best card rated at 1500-1700MB/s write. As a little reference, I pulled in 180 RAW shots @ 12fps with the Canon R5 memory card tests on the Delkin Power card and Canon rates their buffer at 83 RAW shots at 20fps. Similar to Nikon Z9 Performance on the Z9 with the slightly faster Delkin Black.

High Efficiency * – lossy compressed. There are different ways of doing this type of compression, but the short explanation is information that is not being used from the entire 14-bit color space is just discarded, which is why you generally see no loss in quality. How complicated the scene is, will affect the file sizes and the information, so your buffer performance could vary from scene to scene.

Files are much smaller, easily over 1,000 shots with a good card.

High Efficiency – lossy compression, more info reduced. Usually ( I don’t know exactly how Nikon does it ), there are a set of parameters, and any information that is outside of those parameters is clipped. Usually, you won’t notice this unless you do heavy editing.

Unlimited shots in this mode with a good card.

There is no longer an Uncompressed RAW in the Nikon Z9. It is no longer needed since continuous burst speeds can run at full performance with lossless compression. Older cameras, would not perform at full burst speeds with lossless compressions. For example, the Z6 could only shoot 9fps with lossless compression.

Best CFexpress Cards For Video

The Nikon Z9 has some interesting video specs, however, we don’t have all the abilities yet or the full specs since they will be releasing those via firmware next year. I’ll keep this updated as more information is released.

The Nikon Z9 will shoot internally, H.265, ProRes RAW, ProRes HQ (limited to 4k60 10-bit) as well as a new Nikon RAW (which comes as a license from intoPIX).

Here are the RAW video specs we have so far for the intoPix raw from their website.

An interesting spec here is the potential to shoot 8k at 30fps or 60fps. If you shoot 8k at 30fps at 500MB/s then each individual frame comes out to around 16MB. Not sure about the bit depth. If it’s even 12-bits that could be really nice to pull stills from.

Best CFExpress Cards Nikon Z9 – Conclusions

For hybrid shooters that need fast cards for both stills and video, Nikon brand cards, Delkin, Angelbird, Lexar, and the Prograde Cobalt are going to be your best options.

Look for Sandisk and Sony to upgrade their cards with better-sustained minimum speeds in the future.

For those buying the Nikon Z9 just for video, you can get a really good value with some of the Angelbird cards like the Pro 1TB MKII card and their SE card.

For photographers who still use XQD cameras and readers, the Lexar Diamond card is a great option.

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