For Sony camera users, most modern bodies offer a choice: a cheap SD card or a more expensive Type A card that offers much higher performance. Pergear’s latest Type A card is designed to offer much of the performance of the Type A form, but at a more budget-friendly price per GB. In this review, I’ll be testing the 256GB model to see if it really delivers on its promise.
Statistics
Pergear has shown both 256GB and 512GB models of this card. For today’s testing, I had the 256GB model in the studio. I expected only a small difference between these models, as Pergear’s marketing materials show the 512GB model to be only about 20MB/s faster than the smaller model.
These cards are CFexpress Type A, a format commonly associated with modern Sony bodies like the a7R V, a7S III, A1, A9 III and FX cameras. Compared to SD cards, Type A cards are slightly thicker, often with a metal casing. Type A cards also have much faster read and write speeds. This can help your camera’s buffer clear faster when shooting continuously for long periods of time, as well as speed up import.
Efficiency
The Pergear 256GB card is rated for 780MB/s read and write speeds. While I’ve seen some faster Type A cards recently, hitting speeds of over 750MB/s and 350MB/s sequential still puts these cards well ahead of SD cards. For reference, a very fast SD card will hit 300MB/s and only hit 90MB/s sequential.
One thing manufacturers have improved on is matching their listed performance figures to real-world results. During testing, I achieved write speeds of around 765MB/s and read speeds of 756MB/s, with raw image and video download speeds of around 750MB/s.
Overall, I’m pretty happy with those numbers. Those results translate into half the time spent importing data or significantly expanding the camera’s buffer when shooting continuous RAW. For some Sony cameras, it also translates into more choices in video frame rates and codecs.
The only thing missing is a VPG certification. Video Performance Guarantee is essentially a software flag that tells the camera that the card can hit a guaranteed level of write performance. For example, VPG200 means the card can hit 200MB/s sustained. To my knowledge, current cameras don’t actually test for this, but if they do in the future, the card may not qualify for anything locked after that rating.
Value
Overall, the Pergear 256GB is a really solid value. For the lower price, you still get most of the benefits of the most expensive Type A card: fast input, much better buffer performance, unblocked video modes, and the better physical durability of Type A over SD. Pergear also lists a five-year warranty, which is generous for a memory card.
Type A cards are hard to recommend to everyone. It’s hard to push SD cards to their limits, even with today’s cameras. The large buffer sizes have kept up with significant advances in frame rates, meaning you’d have to really pound your camera to hit buffer issues. Meanwhile, most photographers don’t have deadlines where import speed really matters.
However, with Pergear’s Type A cards priced at just $129, it’s much easier to buy. At just 50 cents per GB, they’re much cheaper than competing Type A cards, and even cheaper than many high-performance SD cards (though SD cards are about half as fast in the best case).
If you’re interested in adding Pergear Type A cards to your bag, they are Now available for purchase on Amazon.
What I like
- Featured Price per GB
- Good enough performance for a Class A card
- Strong warranty terms
What could be improved
