Sandisk recently released a 2TB version of their SD and microSD Extreme PRO series and that is a great opportunity to share an interview we recorded with Ruben Dennenwaldt, Head of Business Development & Product Marketing EMEAI at Western Digital during the recent IBC show where we also covered some existing and upcoming products including the SDExpress memory cards that will be available soon.
2TB SD and microSD Extreme PRO cards
We shall start with the recent release of the 2TB version of SD and microSD Extreme PRO series cards. Sandisk unveiled these ultra-high capacity cards as part of its Extreme PRO V30 series with a Read speed of 250MB/s and Write speed of 150MB/s.
Sandisk also has two other series of SD memory cards with V60 and V90 specifications but at the moment they cap at 1TB and 512GB capacity respectively. We hope to see larger capacities with these in the future as well.
You can purchase the 2TB SD for around $300 and the microSD version sells for $250.
The new 2TB Sansdisk Extreme PRO SD card
Sandisk PRO SD express cards
The next product that we were shown in our interview was a prototype of an upcoming SD Express memory card. For those who are not familiar with this standard SD Express is the next iteration of the SD memory standard that has been in development for several years now.
We conducted an in-depth interview with the chairman of the SD Association, Mr. Yosi Pinto about SD Express technology (and the history of the SD standard) way back in 2019 which you can read/watch here. In a nutshell, however, the new SD Express will provide users with almost three times the speed of the fastest existing UHS-II SD cards or close to 900MB/s read speed.
This is a huge jump in performance, however, it took the industry years to bring the technology to the market but now it seems that we are only a few months away from the first cards from Sandisk being available. Of course, the big question is going to be, will they be accompanied by supporting devices (especially since according to Dennenwaldt backward compatibility is not 100% guaranteed with these new cards).
One question that we were interested in was what is going to be the place of SD Express cards in a market where CF-Express A and B cards already control much of the higher-end segment. The answer that Dennenwaldt gave us was that just like the SD vs. CF memory card market segmentation of the past, we are likely to see similar segmentation with future cameras where the higher-end models will use the faster CF Express cards while the more basic cameras will use SD Express (of course that part of the market is now much smaller than what it used to be, so it will remain to be seen what level of adoption we will see from manufacturers for the new cards).
A prototype of the upcoming SD Express from SanDisk
SanDisk Desk Drive
Finally, we got to check out the Sandisk Desk Drive. This desktop-style fast storage unit is designed to stay on your desk and serve as a large capacity fast access storage solution. It comes in 4TB and 8TB versions at the moment with a 16TB on the way (according to Dennenwaldt). It uses NVME technology with up to 1000MB/s read speed and 900MB/s write.
One interesting distinction between the Sandisk Desk Drive and more portable SSD solutions (like the SanDisk Extreme PRO Portable SSD series that we reviewed here in the past) is the DC connection on the Sandisk Desk Drive. We asked Dennenwaldt about this and he explained that the DC power connection allows the Sandisk Desk Drive to avoid pulling power from the host device, and is also something that might also be beneficial for higher-capacity NVMEs.
You can purchase the Sandisk Desk Drive starting from $280.
The SanDisk Desk Drive
We want to thank WD and Sandisk for supporting LensVid’s coverage of the IBC 2024 trade show.
Iddo Genuth 
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