Lexar CFexpress Type-A Memory Card Review

With all the new competition out there, it looks like Lexar has been taking its memory card business very seriously and showing its 25+ years of experience. This is fantastic news for us consumers, as this new CFexpress space has been quite a mess these last few years, and it’s nice that, finally, one brand is standing out and doing everything right.

Note: Lexar, as well as some other brands, send me samples of their products from time to time, and they were very prompt in sending me this new CFexpress Type A card so I could benchmark it in the Sony A7IV. This is very helpful, so thank you, Lexar!

Highlighted Features – Lifetime warranty, currently the fastest card, VPG 400 certified, 800MB/s write speed with a 700MB/s minimum sustained.

Lexar CFexpress Type-A – Amazon / Adorama / B&H

Is the Lexar CFexpress Type A the fastest?

So far, for the latest Lexar Gold CFxA Card, I have only been able to benchmark the Sony A7IV and see great performance, hitting the speed limit of what that camera can output.

For USB-C 3.2 tests, I run the cards through the AJA System Test to get an idea of how they perform with real video codecs. I use 5120×2700 5k Red for the resolution, 16bit RGBA for the Codec Type, and anywhere between 4GB and 64GB, depending on whether I’m running the card for speed or for heat load.

While the top brands usually make cards that are all very close in performance, the speed test with the new Lexar CFx A card shows quite an improvement over the competition.

Here we see a write speed of 825MB/s and a read speed of 886Mb/s. The closest card was the Prograde card running at a write speed of 691MB/s, so that’s quite a nice improvement from Lexar.

Only a few cameras currently support CFexpress Type A cards, and cameras like the Sony A7sIII, the FX3, and the A7IV have a bottomless buffer when shooting stills. However, the CFexpress Type A card is necessary for some video formats in the FX3, A7IV, and A1. The Sony A1 can benefit from faster cards when shooting continuous burst photography, but I have yet to test all the latest new cards in that camera.

In the Sony A7IV Memory Card Speed Tests you can see how CFexpress Type A cards compare to UHS-II cards.

Lexar CFx A Memory Card Review / Bottom Line

Should you buy it? 

Right now Lexar CFx A card is a no-brainer, it’s quite a bit faster than all the competition and priced similarly. However, in some cameras like the Sony A7IV or the video-centric Sony cameras, it might not make a noticeable difference in-camera, but you will still benefit from better USB-C performance with an improvement of 30-40MB/s in reading speeds and over 120MB/s in write speeds if you have a computer and drive that can support these faster speeds.