SanDisk Launches High-Speed Express Cards

The new line will feature 8GB and 16GB flash memory cards for shooting HD video and transferring it to a laptop in a hurry.

SanDisk revealed its latest offering for professional videographers on Thursday, a line of ExpressCard-format flash memory designed specifically for the rigors of handling HD video. The new SanDisk Express cards will come out in both 8GB and 16GB variants and support the SxS flash standard that SanDisk jointly developed with Sony.

For the time being, select Sony cameras will be the only ones to support the cards, but SanDisk envisions other manufacturers adopting the standard in the future. Most modern laptops already come with an ExpressCard slots, meaning the cards can be swapped out of a camera and immediately into a laptop for editing.

Since the ExpressCard bus interfaces directly with the PCI Express bus, it’s 2.5 times faster than the previous PC Card standard. Sony claims the SxS standard should theoretically move data at 100MB/s. At that rate, even transferring the contents of an entire 16GB card onto a laptop hard drive would take less than three minutes. Depending on video compression, that represents about an hour’s worth of HD video.

Both the 8GB and 16GB card will debut in November at $499.99 and $899.99, respectively.