Toshiba still betting on CompactFlash, launches three ‘record-breaking’ CF cards

The once-dominant CompactFlash card format has been largely pushed aside in modern digital cameras, but there's one form factor in which it's still reasonably common: digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) cameras, particularly higher end models aimed at professional use. It's precisely this market that Japan's Toshiba Corp. is focusing on with the launch of three new high-speed CompactFlash cards due to ship this spring. The company has lofty ambitions indeed, expecting to secure itself a third of the total market for DSLR-friendly CF cards by 2015.

Toshiba's new cards will be sold under the Exceria Pro brand, and they'll be available in capacities of 16, 32, or 64GB. Toshiba claims that they'll provide the "world's highest level read and write speeds" as of December 2012, with a maximum read speed of 160MB/second. Write speeds will vary depending on the card: 95MB/second for the 16GB variant, and 150MB/second for the higher capacities.

That's pretty close to the theoretical maximum 167MB/second provided by their UDMA 7 interface, and it should be noted that it is a peak speed. The all-important sustained read and write speeds aren't stated, but hopefully will be similarly swift. (Toshiba does note, however, that the cards merit a VPG-20 rating, which guarantees that they're capable of capturing 20MB/second Full HD video streams without any dropped frames.)

No information on pricing or availability had been provided by Toshiba at press time.