OWC has just announced a new line of high-performance, rugged SD and CFexpress Type B memory cards aimed at photographers, videographers, and other creative professions. Price and performance-wise, they look set to go toe-to-toe with the best companies like SanDisk and Sony have to offer.
Who are OWC?
OWC stands for Other World Computing. Since the late-80s, the brand has produced high-end memory upgrades, external drives, network-attached storage, and accessory products, like docks and cables, for Macs and PCs. In 2010, it started producing flash storage devices, and now it’s taking that knowledge and making professional quality memory cards.
This isn’t some new brand launching a line of memory cards—it’s an incredibly respected and successful one expanding into a new area.
OWC Atlas S Pro SD memory cards
According to OWC, its UHS-II V90 Atlas S Pro SD cards “truthfully” and reliably offer up to 276 MB/s write and 290 MB/s read speeds in the real world. That’s sufficient for shooting high-speed bursts and recording 8K video.
More interestingly, OWC makes a big deal about how durable its cards are. It uses “advanced pseudo-Single-Level Cell (pSLC) flash memory to deliver 10X higher durability,” and claims they are resistant to impact, bends, shocks, UV rays, and X-rays. To back it up, they are covered by a five-year limited warranty.
The Atlas S Pro SD cards are available now with 32GB ($49), 64GB ($79), 128GB ($149), and 256GB ($299) of storage.
OWC Atlas Pro and Atlas Pro Ultra CFexpress Type B memory cards
The Atlas Pro and Atlas Pro Ultra CFexpress Type B cards offer up to 1500 MB/s write and 1700 MB/s peak read speeds, while the Atlas Pro Ultra cards deliver “sustained 1400 MB/s speed for rapid-fire burst mode and high resolution 8K video capture.”
Like its SD cards, OWC claims the Atlas Pro and Atlas Pro Ultra CFexpress cards are “rugged”, “tough”, and resistant to impact, bends, shocks, UV rays, and X-rays. Likewise, they also have a five-year limited warranty.
The Atlas Pro and Atlas Pro Ultra memory are due to be released in “early Q2” of this year. There’s no pricing info yet, but the Atlas Pro cards will be available in 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB, and the Atlas Pro Ultra cards will be in 320GB and 640GB capacities.
Atlas FXR Thunderbolt CFexpress card reader
There is also an accompanying Atlas FXR Thunderbolt CFexpress card reader that will be available around the same time. Apparently, it is around the size of a credit card (“nearly 7x smaller than other Thunderbolt CFX readers”), and will allow you to “ingest video footage and photos at over 1500 MB/s.”
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