Have you ever wanted to carry around a million, one-megabyte JPEGs in your pocket? Or how about 12,500 uncompressed RAW files from the 42-megapixel Sony A7R II? Or maybe 36 hours of compressed 4K video? Well, thanks to SanDisk’s new, one-terabyte SDXC memory card, you can.
Yes, that’s correct, you can now get an SD card large enough to rival your hard drive. Well, you can’t quite get it yet — SanDisk is showing off a prototype at Photokina and has not yet released any information on pricing or availability. The company’s 512GB SD card sells for $600, though, so while this new one may be as large as your hard drive, it will certainly not be as cheap. Additionally, no other specifications about the card, such as transfer speed, have been released.
“The SanDisk 1TB SD card prototype represents another significant achievement as growth of high-resolution content and capacity-intensive applications such as virtual reality, video surveillance, and 360 video, are progressing at astounding rates,” said SanDisk’s vice president of product management, Dinish Bahal, in a statement.
SanDisk is rightly proud of this milestone, which serves as yet another reminder of the unrelenting pace of technological progress. It has been sixteen years since SanDisk introduced its first 64MB SD card, and capacities have since increased by a factor of 15,625.
While most people likely have little use for such a large SD card at this time, there are applications for it in high-end video production, especially with the rise 360-degree and VR content. The next wave of consumer cameras, such as Panasonic’s recently announced Lumix GH5 that shoots 6K photo streams at 30 frames per second, will also benefit from increased memory card capacities.
For now, SanDisk’s 1TB SD card remains the Ferrari of memory cards; something we can all be impressed by, yet that few of us will actually own.
