Pana and Toshiba SDXC promises speed, size

Among the quieter news at CES, both Panasonic and Toshiba have unveiled near-final plans for their first SDXC memory cards. Both are using the newly raised ceilings on capacity to double their maximum storage to 64GB and likewise promise a speed increase not often seen in SD. The Panasonic and Toshiba cards have peak write speeds of 22MB and 35MB per second respectively, enough to give them much better performance in continuous RAW shooting on an SLR or downloading content directly from the Internet to an SD card.

While Panasonic doesn't list its read speed, Toshiba says its cards should muster a 60MB per second maximum speed downstream. The former does expect a longer lifespan as a new memory controller can perform automatic error correction on the fly to prevent long-term data loss.

Of the two companies, Panasonic expects to be the first with a shipping product and will have both 64GB and 48GB SDXC cards in February for $600 and $450 each, in time to use them with new camcorders. Toshiba will have just the one 64GB card in spring for an unknown price but also promises 16GB and 32GB SDHC cards with similar speeds at the same time.

By Electronista Staff