XQD memory card announced by Compact Flash Association

Tweet

Just when you thought things had settled down in the world of memory cards, with the choice between Compact Flash (mostly in pro-oriented cameras) and one of the various flavors of SD (for pretty much everything else; read "What kind of memory card do I need for my point-and-shoot camera?") formats, along comes the Compact Flash Association, which has just unveiled a new format memory card, the XQD. Designed from the ground up as a high-performance card that will accomodate the increasing demands for faster transfer speed and storage capacity, the XQD is somewhere between CF and SD cards in size (38.5x29.8x3.8mm).

The XQD card  is said to have a 125MB/sec and higher transfer speed. Although the QXD specs were finalized by the Compact Flash Association, the XQD will not be backward compatible with CF cards (which are somewhat larger) or SD cards (which are much smaller).

Industry insiders report that SanDisk, Canon, Nikon and Sony are among companies planning to introduce cameras with XQD card slots and will be promoting the new format for serious photography and video.