These are very, very good numbers by old metrics. So good, it would be poised to unseat the Sony TOUGH CFexpress Type B card that has been PetaPixel‘s recommendation for the last year. But the good news doesn’t stop there: editors won’t even need to buy a new CFexpress 4.0 card to take advantage of this option. For example, below are the testing numbers from a new Silver edition Lexar 512GB CFexpress card — the same model it announced in August— as processed through Lexar’s latest-generation USB 3.2 card reader: Lexar Silver 512GB CFexpress Card tested through a Lexar USB 3.2 card reader.

Tested: New CFexpress 4.0 Readers Make Your Current Cards Way

Announced at the end of August, CFexpress 4.0 is still a bit of a ways out for most memory card manufacturers. Not ProGrade Digital, however, who announced a new 1.3TB card and card reader just a few days later. That is not a small increase: that represents about 300 MB/s faster write speeds and about 700 MB/s faster read speeds just by using a next-generation reader. Obviously, this means that PetaPixel will have to update its entire CFexpress memory card test and put together new numbers based on what is possible thanks to USB 4.0, so look forward to that in the near future. The speeds CFexpress can reach are thanks to this new, much faster USB 4.0 connection.In fact, these speeds are so good that they would blow any non-Thunderbolt SSD out of the water and are the closest we’ve ever seen USB come to the performance of the OWC Envoy Pro FX and Lacie Rugged SSD that we tested in our best SSD guide.