The official name of the card is the Lexar Professional 400x SDXC UHS-I. It’s geared towards photographers who need to “capture, store, and transfer a large number of high-quality photos” and videographers who need to record massive amounts of HD video. While it’s fairly common to find 64GB SD cards these days, Lexar clearly lives by the mantra of “there’s no such thing as too much storage.” Its latest Secure Digital (SD) card, the Lexar Professional 400x SDXC UHS-I, adheres to the SDXC standard and crams 256GB of flash storage into its tiny little plastic shell by way of a 20 nanometer flash memory process.
Lexar has set a new bar in SD memory card capacity with its new 256GB card — the largest size offered in the SDXC (Secure Digital eXtended Capacity) format. SDXC has an upper limit of 2TB, compared to the 32GB cap that restricts the SDHC (Secure Digital High Capacity) format.
Unless you absolutely must have a ridiculous 256GB of storage inside your camera, there are two big reasons not to buy this card:
First off, as is commonly said, it’s not a good idea to put all your eggs in one basket. If you shoot an entire important event or job using this card, experiencing a card failure would be absolutely devastating. Lexar does state that the cards are extensively tested for compatibility and reliability using more than 800 cameras and devices, and they do offer a free copy of the data recovery program Image Rescue 4 with the card.
The second reason is the price: this card will cost a whopping $900 when it hits shelves in October 2012. That’s right: nine Benjamins. To put that into perspective, Lexar’s 32GB 400x SDHC card currently costs about $37. You get 256GB by buying 8 of those cards. Total price? $296. For $900, you could buy 24.3 separate 32GB cards, for a total capacity of 777GB. If you a step down from 256GB and buy a 128GB 400x SDXC, you’ll only pay around $180.
At $899.99 and available in October, Lexar’s card is well out of most people’s budgets, but would be worth it as a secondary back-up solution for computers with an SD card slot.
(source)
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