ProGrade Digital manufactures a wide range of memory cards, aiming its products at the professional market. While their Iridium range of CFexpress Type A cards already performed fantastically in my real-world testing, the combination of their blazing speeds and larger capacities resulted in a higher MSRP (though this is still a good price per GB, to be clear). With the Gold range, ProGrade brings many of the desirable features at a lower price and lower capacity.
Technical data
The Gold line for CFexpress Type A includes one SKU at launch: a 120GB capacity card. This card is fully compliant with the CompactFlash Association 2.0 specification and has a VPG200 rating, both of which show that ProGrade takes standards compliance very seriously. While some low-cost cards have had issues with non-compliance, this should not be an issue here.
Beyond the standards, the Gold card is rated for “normal” speeds for CFexpress Type A cards in this price range. Maximum read speeds of 900MB/s, burst write speeds of 800MB/s, and sustained write speeds of 450MB/s mean this card far outperforms SD cards in Sony cameras that offer SD/CFexpress Type A interoperability. This also means you get excellent recording performance when reading from the card. While the faster cards in the Iridium range deliver even faster reads and writes, the Gold card will make a noticeable difference in buffer clear and recording operations.
With a VPG200 rating, which ensures at least 200 MB/s sustained writes, you also have access to some video recording modes that require this rating – these are modes like the highest frame rates in slow motion recording.
In addition to speed, ProGrade has also retained all the desirable features of its other cards. The card features thermal throttling to protect it from overheating, while a laser-engraved serial numbering system helps ensure quality control. The card is designed to operate over a wide temperature range of -10°C to 70°C and has X-ray proof and shockproof durability.
Additionally, the card is “Refresh Pro” capable, meaning it works with ProGrade’s Refresh Pro software and readers to monitor the card’s health, perform a thorough cleaning to restore performance, and update the firmware.
Overall, with an MSRP of $159.99, this card is a competitive option for Sony shooters, especially when you compare the price per GB. The level of features and build quality that ProGrade puts into its higher-end cards is also there, which is really nice to see. The ProGrade CFexpress Type A Gold Class card is available at B&H.
