There are a number of ways that new SD memory cards can grab some attention. Some offer larger-than-usual storage capacity, while others boast wireless connectivity. Toshiba hopes its Exceria Pro series cards will stand out because of their speed. With impressive data write speeds of up to 240 MB/s, the company is claiming they're the world's fastest.
Toshiba says it's been able to achieve the super-quick read/write speeds of the Exceria Pro SD cards by integrating a newly-developed controller which is compliant with the UHS-II (Ultra High Speed II) standard. This means the 16 GB and 32 GB cards can write at up to 240 MB/s and read at 260 MB/s.
However, while this should be good news for anyone who needs to save a lot of data quickly, it's not quite that simple. That's because we're not aware of any cameras that are currently able to make use of these blazing speeds. So videographers and photographers who would like the added speed to help with things like continuous burst shooting and recording 4K video, might have to wait a little while for the hardware to catch up.
In addition to the upcoming Exceria Pro cards, Toshiba has announced it is also releasing standard Exceria SD cards. While matching the read speeds of their Pro brothers, the 32 GB and 64 GB capacity UHS-II compliant cards will have a slower write speed of 120 MB/s.
No pricing has yet been revealed, but both the Exceria and Exceria Pro SD memory cards are due to be released in Japan in October, and then Europe by the end of 2013.
Source: Toshiba
To a greater degree, this also happens to portable (usb/SD) solid state media. I have the perfect example with 16gb Lexar thumb drives which are used by the kilogram at our place of work. These little guys can write/read at 20-30mb/s for about 5 seconds, then steady state to a write of 8 and read of 20. And they do get noticeably hot, but we've never had a fail.
Exceptions to the rule exist. The SanDisk Extreme Pro has a quoted 95mb write, and it maintains this consistently with heavy I/O, and achieve this in up to 80 degrees C ambient. It is obviously designed to live in an SLR body for most of its life, and living in the boot of a car in the summer. But it doesn't come cheap.