As I am in the process of switching systems and my new Camera has CFExpress cards + SD cards, I need a new card reader. Ideally one that does those 2 formats.
There are not a lot for that purpose. Most card readers are either the old style (SD, CF, micro), or just CFExpress/XQD(and be careful, some of them only support one format, and there is also CFExpress Type A :)). I did not want to have 2 card readers dangling around, so i got myself a Prograde Digital, which has SD UHS-II and CFExpress Type B in one small body, supporting USB-C as the PC connection.Â
One of the nice and unusual things about this is visible in the video/photo below. The body is magnetic, and it allows for rather neat attachment possibilities. Back of the laptop screen, or the legs of my desk.Â
The unit feels very solid, like i feel sure that this will survive a fall. They claim up to 1.2 GB/s transfer rates, but as i real life no card does that, i don’t care too much about that particular claim.
I did a “loop that copies the content of one card to the other and back”, where 70GB of RAW files were copied. That took 14min writing to the CFExpress card, and 18min the other way round, which is like 4-5GB a minute for internal transfer. Faster than the SD card reader i am using right now, your mileage will vary.Â
Copying the 70GB from the CFExpress card to my machine took 96 seconds, which is very good imo, writing the data back took 730 seconds, so it pays of to have a very fast SSD in your main editing machine.Â
Overall I like that reader. It’s small, the magnetic enclosure is a unique and useful feature (I love that I can attach it to the legs of my desk instead of it lying around on the desk :)), it feels solid enough for field work and the speed is good. Get’s my recommendation if someone looks for a setup like this.