Lexar makes a wide range of SD cards, which can be a little confusing. The Silver card we’re looking at here is a lower-mid-range offering, sitting just above the company’s entry-level Blue series SD cards and just below Lexar’s Silver Plus and Silver Pro cards. At the top of the Lexar SD card hierarchy is the Gold series.
While the Blue, Silver, and Gold series are noticeably different, the same cannot be said when comparing Silver and Silver Plus. Both are UHS-I cards, and both have an advertised read speed of 205MB/s. The only performance difference is that Silver Plus boasts a maximum write speed of 150MB/s, while Silver cards are a bit slower at 140MB/s – that’s all.
Read more: Lexar Professional Silver Pro SDXC Memory Card Review Lexar Professional Silver Plus SDXC memory card review
(Image credit: Future)
Lexar Professional Silver: Key Features
Lexar Professional Silver cards are available in 1TB, 512GB, 256GB, 128GB, and 64GB capacities. All except the 64GB variant have the stated read speed of 205MB/s and write speed of 140MB/s, but the 64GB card has a significantly lower maximum write speed of 90MB/s. All capacities meet the V30 speed standard, meaning they can maintain a minimum write speed of 30MB/s when recording video. This is fairly typical for a UHS-I SD card, and Lexar claims it’s fast enough to record 4K video at 60 frames per second.
According to Lexar, the Silver Series cards are “built to last” and are wear-resistant (describe that?), temperature-resistant (they’re designed to operate between -25°C and 85°C), x-ray-proof, vibration-resistant, magnet-resistant, and shock-resistant.
Lexar Professional Silver: Performance
(Image credit: Future)
To determine the Silver card’s optimal performance, we turned to industry-standard memory and storage benchmarking software, Crystal Disk Mark. The card was connected to a USB4 port on a fast laptop via a high-quality UHS-II SD card reader from ProGrade Digital to ensure there was no testing stress.
The maximum read speeds of 167.09MB/s and write speeds of 156.52MB/s that we recorded are nearly identical to the performance of Lexar’s Silver Plus SD card. However, this write speed is particularly impressive here, as the Silver card is advertised at “only” 140MB/s. It’s a shame, however, that we couldn’t get closer to the advertised read speed of 205MB/s.
(Image credit: Future)
For a real-world file transfer test, we took a single large video file and a folder full of small images and moved them to and from the memory card to see what kind of read and write speeds you can expect under normal use.
Moving multiple small files will always take a little longer than moving a single file of the same total size, but the Silver card achieved remarkably consistent speeds in these tests. Interestingly, most of our real-world transfer speeds were noticeably slower from the Silver card, even though its Crystal Disk Mark results were almost the same as the Silver Plus SDXC card. The 142MB/s read speed on multiple image files is comparable to the Silver Plus, but in the other three tests the Silver card was 7-11MB/s slower. These read speed results are also well below the card’s stated maximum of 205MB/s.
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Testing the transfer speed in practice
Header cell – column 0
To read
Write
Large single file
145MB/s
128MB/s
Multiple small files
142MB/s
121MB/s
To see how the card performs when used in camera, we used our Sony a7R III to shoot a continuous series of 31 uncompressed RAW stills in the camera’s Hi+ burst mode (the maximum number of stills before the internal buffer limit is reached). This produces a total series of images of 2.47GB, which took around 30 seconds to transfer from the camera’s internal buffer to the memory card. Calculating the images then shows that the images were written to the card at 84.31MB/s – exactly the same speed as the Silver Plus card, but significantly slower than the stated maximum write rate of 140MB/s. This is the camera we always use for in-camera SD card testing, and it has achieved faster write speeds with other UHS-I SD cards, so it’s unlikely that the camera is to blame for this disappointing result.
When we shot a 4K video clip at the camera’s maximum bitrate of 100 Mbps, there were still no noticeable glitches or frame drops.
(Image credit: Future)
Lexar Professional Silver: Conclusion
We were most impressed with the Lexar Professional Silver Series SDXC card. While the in-camera write speeds we achieved were a little disappointing and we didn’t get close to the advertised 205MB/s read speed, the card was still able to easily capture high-bitrate 4K video. The read/write transfer speeds when moving data to and from a computer were also fast enough to ensure we were never left waiting impatiently.
The only real problem is why this particular SD card even exists. Its performance is only slightly slower than the next card up in Lexar’s SD card hierarchy – Silver Plus – and the Silver and Silver Plus ranges are very close in price for equivalent capacities, so there’s little point in opting for a Silver card when a Silver Plus model is likely to cost just a few dollars more and be slightly faster.
Read more: For more choices, check out our top recommendations for the best memory cards for your camera – SD, microSD, CF and XQD, and for the best speeds on your laptop, the best memory card readers
