Availability of Lexar XQD Cards, Directly from Lexar

First of all, a bit of background information. The XQD format was jointly developed by Sony, Nikon, and SanDisk; they announced it in late 2010. In January 2012, Nikon introduced the D4, which has dual XQD and CF memory card slots, and that became the first device of any type to use XQD cards. Simultaneously Sony announced the very first commercially available XQD card, for the D4 to use. Later on in 2012, Lexar announced that they too would produce XQD cards. However, even though SanDisk was one of the founders for the XQD format, so far they have shown no interest in selling XQD cards themselves.

Fast forward to 2016, Nikon introduced the D5, D500 and then the D850 in 2017, all have XQD slots. While the popularity of the D500 and D850 should have increased the demand for XQD, no other still-camera manufacturers have adopted the XQD format. Sony uses XQD in some of their high-end camcorders.

In June 2017, Micron, the parent company for Lexar, announced that they were planning to shut down the entire Lexar brand, which sells a lot of consumer electronics memory products, as it was not very profitable. But in August (2017), the Chinese company Longsys announced that they would take over the Lexar brand from Micron. Apparently Longsys has been the actual manufacturer for a lot of Lexar consumer products anyway, including XQD cards. Unlike Micron, Longsys feels that there is a bright future for the Lexar brand.

Concerning XQD, the Lexar ones were gradually sold out towards the latter part of 2017. There were rumors that Lexar would no longer produce XQD cards. But on October 31, 2017, Lexar announced that they would continue to manufacture XQD cards:

Lexar responds to rumors: will continue making XQD memory cards

Fast forward 5+ months, availability for Lexar XQD cards is still a major issue. The only other XQD supplier is Sony, and sometimes Sony cards are also out of stock and prices have gone up. Once again there are various rumors. Yesterday, April 5, 2018, I decided to ask Lexar directly about their XQD cards. Their headquarters are in San Jose, California, not far from where I live. And I received a response from them promptly, in about an hour and half:

Hello Cheung,

 

Thank you for contacting Lexar.

 

We have indeed temporarily stopped production. This is due to the recent purchase of Lexar, acquired by Longsys which now controls production. In this time of transition we have ceased production, until the two companies sort out all new processes. We do not have a ETA at this time when production will continue, however we do plan to start production very soon.

 

If you have further questions or concerns, please contact our technical support department. You can find more information on how to contact us at Support - Lexar

 

Terrence S

Lexar Technical Support

Support - Lexar

Understandably, their answer is a bit vague. However, since as far as I know Longsys has been manufacturing XQD cards for Micron/Lexar all along, they shouldn't have any technical issues. It sounds like they are still working out some contractual or perhaps some legal and/or financial details. Since XQD was originally the standard from Sony, Nikon, and SanDisk, it is unclear there is also royalty involved. But I have no other details; any further discussion will quickly become more rumors and conjectures.

Unfortunately, Lexar is not providing any timeline about their resumption of the manufacturing on XQD cards. "Very soon" is of course open to interpretations.

I have more thoughts about the future of XQD and perhaps CFX (CF Express) cards will supersede them, but that will be another post.

Thanks, Shun. That's both good news, and interesting and useful information. I also wasn't aware that Longsys had been the supplier for these cards, so apologies for any of my speculation that implied too much doom and gloom based on this not being the case.

Fingers crossed that "very soon" is very soon. :-)

"until the two companies sort out all new processes"...

Errrr, why? What was wrong with the old processes??

Does anyone know whether they bought the machinery or just the name etc? The wording in all the press releases is ambiguous, to say the least.

"until the two companies sort out all new processes"...

 

Errrr, why? What was wrong with the old processes??

 

Does anyone know whether they bought the machinery or just the name etc? The wording in all the press releases is ambiguous, to say the least.

Mike, I have the impression that Lexar has provided me all the information they are willing to share with the public at this time. Any additional details will likely fall into Longsys and Micron, and perhaps even Sony, Nikon, and Sandisk's proprietary business information. If you still have additional questions, it is best that you get in touch with Lexar directly, as I did. Maybe they have more information to share with you.

Support - Lexar

Now we all have heard (actually read) directly from Lexar about their production of XQD cards, I am moving on to discussing about the future.

I came across this article written by tech writer Jason Schneider about a year and half ago in October 2016:

The CFAST vs XQD Battle is Already Over: Stop Buying CFAST - Resource

If you are into high-tech details and terminologies, there is plenty of information, but for those who are not exactly tech savvy, essentially the CFast cards favored by Canon and several video cam companies such as BlackMagic, etc. has reached a speed limit due to the underlying SATA interface. Among still cameras, Canon only uses CFast in the latest 1DX Mark 2 and only in 1 of its 2 memory card slots; the other slot is CF. There is no other still camera that uses CFast. However, CFast is more popular among high-end camcorders.

The Compact Flash Association has already announced the standard for the next generation of high-speed memory cards will be CFexpress (CFX) that has exactly the same form factor and underlying technology (PCI) as XQD. In other words, we will be able to insert a CFX card into the current XQD slots and the electronic connections will match. But CFast cards are bigger than XQD/CFX.

Meanwhile, a couple of card manufacturers have already announced that they will produce CFX cards:

• Delkin: this article is from a month ago as Delkin is shipping CFX samples for testing: Delkin Ships More Samples of Newest Form Factor CFexpress to OEMs
  
• ProGrade: this is a new memory card manufacturer, formed by ex-Lexar management, and they specialize in high-end memory cards. You can pre-order their SD cards from the likes of B&H, etc. Interestingly, their CFast cards are already in stock. ProGrade will skip XQD and go straight to CFX: ProGrade Digital Skips XQD Memory Cards, Pushes for CFexpress
  

Most likely CFX cards will be available in the coming months, and since they should be compatible with XQD, I would imagine that whether Lexar resumes XQD production or not may soon be a moot point. Since there is no current camera that needs CFX, it is very much in Delkin, ProGrade and whoever manufactures CFX card's interest to make sure that their CFX cards are fully compatible with current Nikon camera such as the D4, D5, D500, and D850 because owners of those cameras will likely be the first customers for CFX cards. Likewise it is very much in Nikon's interest to provide a firmware upgrade for CFX compatibility such that more card choices are available to Nikon users.

But who exactly need cards that are faster than XQD and CFast? Well, 6K and 8K video are either available already or just around the corner. Future mirrorless sports cameras (from Sony, and most likely also from Canon and Nikon) that can capture 20fps, 30fps or faster without RAW compression or with lossless compression will exceed what XQD can deliver today. CFX is not going to be a popular consumer product as SD cards, but there should be sufficient high-end demand for it.

The big question is whether the price for CFX cards will also be high end. Hopefully unifying XQD and CFast into just one format will generate enough volume and competition to bring down the price.

Personally I have 8 XQD cards; that is way too many. As usual, for those who use Nikon cameras that accept XQD cards, I would buy enough to meet your current needs, but XQD will likely be superseded in the near future.

Future mirrorless sports cameras (from Sony, and most likely also from Canon and Nikon)

Too many card choices already and still waiting for Nikon and Canon to catch up - while Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, Fuji are just about already there, if not already. It's confusing and exhausting with the emerging-new and the soon-to-be-obsoletes.

 

The Compact Flash Association has already announced the standard for the next generation of high-speed memory cards will be CFexpress (CFX) that has exactly the same form factor and underlying technology (PCI) as XQD. In other words, we will be able to insert a CFX card into the current XQD slots and the electronic connections will match. But CFast cards are bigger than XQD/CFX.

 

...

 

Since there is no current camera that needs CFX, it is very much in Delkin, ProGrade and whoever manufactures CFX card's interest to make sure that their CFX cards are fully compatible with current Nikon camera such as the D4, D5, D500, and D850 because owners of those cameras will likely be the first customers for CFX cards. Likewise it is very much in Nikon's interest to provide a firmware upgrade for CFX compatibility such that more card choices are available to Nikon users.

Hopefully this will be the case for the reasons you suggest, but generally it hasn't worked this way in the past - e.g., when higher capacity versions of SD and CF cards became available, they often weren't compatible with older cameras, and this wasn't always fixed with firmware upgrades. The old cards, however, were generally compatible with the new cameras.

Hopefully this will be the case for the reasons you suggest, but generally it hasn't worked this way in the past - e.g., when higher capacity versions of SD and CF cards became available, they often weren't compatible with older cameras, and this wasn't always fixed with firmware upgrades. The old cards, however, were generally compatible with the new cameras.

Richard, what you are referring to is a totally different situation, as the file system format had changed when higher-capacity CF and SD cards became available, e.g. SDHC for over 2G and SDXC for over 64G.

The difference between XQD and CFX is not storage capacity but rather data transfer speed. Both XQD and CFX use the same underlying PCIe standard. The difference is that CFX will use multiple (up to 8) PCIe lanes in parallel to gain even higher transfer speed. The existing Nikon DSLRs probably cannot take full advantage of the extra lanes in CFX, but if the parties choose to, CFX can be fully compatible with Nikon DSLRs. Given that neither my D5 nor my D500 has ever filled up the buffer while shooting 14-bit lossless compressed RAW at 12 and 10fps respectively, using current XQD cards, any extra transfer speed is merely a waste anyway.

I should point out that while both the current Sony type G XQD cards and Lexar 2933x XQD cards work well on Nikon DSLRs, with similar speeds and similar prices (before Micron sold the Lexar brand to Longsys and interrupted their XQD production), it is well known that at least back in 2016, those Lexar XQD cards had compatibility issues with Sony camcorders.

Since Nikon itself does not sell any memory cards, and existing and future high-end Nikon cameras is a huge potential market for CFX cards, it is pretty clear that it is in both sides' interested to make CFX compatible with Nikon cameras that use XQD. My main concern is that CFX maybe very expensive initially such that one is much better off sticking with XQD cards or even SD cards on the D850 and D500.

I'm surprised Sandisk have nothing to say. Mind you, they backed CFast which, by all reports, has reached it's maximum speed.

I can find zero useful results if you try the search-words Sandisk and CFX in Google.

If CFX is effectively XQD 3.0, it renders 2.0 dead in the water. Why would anyone start making them now?

It will be interesting whether firmware can allow either/both 'type' to work in a Nikon D850 slot, the technos seem to imply it's very straightforward!

Only a number of high-end video cams use CFast, but apparently there is a market for such cards, as both Sony and ProGrade (a new high-end memory card manufacturer formed by ex-Lexar people, and ProGrade uses the same black and gold color scheme as Lexar) recently started selling CFast cards.

The SATA technology inside CFast is reaching a dead end, but given its install base, it will be around for a few more years. The transition to CFX will be slow since you need to replace those expensive video cams. (Does any of them have incterchangable card modules like the D5?) It will happen when we go to even higher definition such that CFast cannot handle it any more.

ProGrade has just announced a 1T CFX card. The 256G Sony XQD is over $400. I can’t imagine how much a 1T card will cost initially.

ProGrade Digital is First To Publicly Demonstrate CFexpress™ 1.0 Technology in 1TB Capacity

As I said, the current write speed from Sony and Lexar XQD cards is already faster than (or at least on par with) what the D5 can write at 12fps. Any more speed is just a waste until we go to even higher frame rates or more pixels.

As I said, the current write speed from Sony and Lexar XQD cards is already faster than (or at least on par with) what the D5 can write at 12fps. Any more speed is just a waste until we go to even higher frame rates or more pixels.

It's certainly not more data than the D850 can buffer - the D850 clearly does run out of buffer space, especially at 9fps. Whether the limit to faster writing from a D850 is the D850's card interface or the card itself is another matter. Not that I'm a great spray-and-pray shooter, but (as with video on a DSLR) for the rare occasions when I might want it, I'd rather have more capability than less.

Well, I figured I had to save up for memory cards as part of a body switch anyway.

To me, the high-pixel-density cameras such as the D800, D810, and D850 are for precise, careful shooting on a tripod or inside a studio to take full advantage of those pixels. Any bit of subject motion or focusing issue will more than negate the 46MP in the D850. Therefore, it makes no sense at all to run the D850 at 9fps, but that is merely me and Nikon does provide the capability to shoot the D850 @ 9fps.

Additionally, the D850 only has one XQD slot. Unless you don't care about having a backup at the time you capture, the SD card slot will be the bottleneck anyway.

Richard, what you are referring to is a totally different situation, as the file system format had changed when higher-capacity CF and SD cards became available, e.g. SDHC for over 2G and SDXC for over 64G.

 

The difference between XQD and CFX is not storage capacity but rather data transfer speed. Both XQD and CFX use the same underlying PCIe standard. The difference is that CFX will use multiple (up to 8) PCIe lanes in parallel to gain even higher transfer speed.

Sure, but the important point is that (as suggested by your link and other sources) a firmware upgrade is likely to be required to support CFexpress. Whether this will be forthcoming for all their XQD cameras is up to Nikon. I'd hope that, say, the discontinued 6-year old D4 will be supported, but until there is an actual update or announcement, we might as well be posting on Nikon Rumours!

Sure, but the important point is that (as suggested by your link and other sources) a firmware upgrade is likely to be required to support CFexpress. Whether this will be forthcoming for all their XQD cameras is up to Nikon. I'd hope that, say, the discontinued 6-year old D4 will be supported, but until there is an actual update or announcement, we might as well be posting on Nikon Rumours!

Well, if you would only discuss something after Nikon announces it, there is no point to project anything in the future. By its nature, there is some educated guess and speculation involved when we discuss the future. IMO educated guesses about the future help us make better decisions today.

Just take Lexar XQD cards as an example, there is always the possibility that Lexar cannot produce them again, ever, due to some contractual issues. However, since Lexar says they expect to produce them again "very soon," I would say unless you need another XQD card immediately, it is a good idea to wait a bit longer for more supply, and hopefully XQD prices from all brands will come back down, rather than paying more for a Sony one immediately.

IMO it is very much in Nikon's interest to have more memory card suppliers for their high-end cameras. For example, if Sony is the only XQD supplier, and God forbid there is another natural disaster that destroys Sony's XQD factory, any shortage will immediately put Nikon in a very bad position for their high-end cameras. It is the fact that it is very beneficial to all parties involved to make CFX backward compatible with those Nikon DSLRs that use XQD that leads me to believe compatibility won't be an issue. But again, we are talking about the future and there are no guarantees.

Shun quoth:

To me, the high-pixel-density cameras such as the D800, D810, and D850 are for precise, careful shooting on a tripod or inside a studio to take full advantage of those pixels. Any bit of subject motion or focusing issue will more than negate the 46MP in the D850. Therefore, it makes no sense at all to run the D850 at 9fps, but that is merely me and Nikon does provide the capability to shoot the D850 @ 9fps.

While I'm more of a portrait and landscape shooter, I wouldn't say 9fps is pointless just because of the resolution. You're just as likely to miss an individual shot as a batch of shots, so arguably with a moving subject you're more likely to get a hit with a burst. Even at 46MP, there's still a fair bit of depth of field on many larger subjects (fortunately for me, having embarrassed myself experimenting with garden birds, we're not all hummingbird specialists). Am I likely to want to keep every 46MP shot in a 9fps sequence? Nope - but since I don't believe there's a way to shoot a sequence to the internal buffer and selectively discard from it (even manually) there's a reasonably chance of my using this mode, though I'll have to get better at throwing away dross. There's also focus bracketing (and if it wasn't a faff I'd be tempted to AF tune all my lenses to short focus so that I could bracket...) and the time it takes to shoot a sequence for focus stacking. Some cameras and/or phones have the ability to shoot a sequence, then heuristically pick a favourite (typically by sharpness); I'd really like to see something like the D850 offer this, and it's been part of my "how do you make an 8K video camera into a practical stills camera" concept for a while. RAM is plenty fast enough, but for so long as we need to dump every image out, fast flash is the way.

Additionally, the D850 only has one XQD slot. Unless you don't care about having a backup at the time you capture, the SD card slot will be the bottleneck anyway.

The only time I believe I've ever shot full raw backup mode on my D810 was when I agreed to shot a friend's wedding. (It's been three years and I'm still trickling out images to them, which shows how well that went.) It's also the most significant time I got hit by write speed limits, since by that point I was down to a slow SD card - but I do have about 300 images (not all, admittedly, in perfect focus, mostly due to the lighting in the evening) that were acceptable from the dancing alone, plus a few hundred from the rest. Normally, I'm not doing anything critical enough to justify a backup, so the main interest I'd have in dual XQD would be if RAID0 (or alternating output between cards, which Nikon really ought to have as an option if the hardware can do it) were supported. I do write to SD, but only JPEG (and video), and that's considerably less intensive on bit rate and hasn't so far been a sticking point. I'd be prepared to drop to XQD and raw only for 9fps sequences if it was an issue.

So: I still care about fast card performance even on a single-XQD, high res camera like the D850. Possibly more. But I've no idea what the performance limit of the D850's hardware is, compared with that of the cards.

I am sure the opportunity to make profit will bring SanDisk on board to produce CFX cards. So far we essentially have confirmation that Delkin and the new ProGrade will produce CFX cards.

Meanwhile, BlackMagic has just announced at the NAB a "pocket" video cam that sells for $1295:

Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 4K brings major changes

The new cam can use either SD or CFast memory cards, and its price point suggests that it is a consumer product. (How many people will spend $200 to $300, perhaps more, on a memory card after buying a $1295 camera?) Therefore, I don't think CFast is going away any time soon, and there are reasons that both Sony and ProGrade have recently started selling CFast cards. The implication is that the transition to CFX is probably going to be a slow one, but we are quite sure that it will gradually happen because CFast is reaching a dead end due to its underlying SATA technology.

Ah - I'd missed that the new PCC took CFast cards. I've been vaguely eyeing the old one for a long time and vaguely hoping for an update (mostly because it's one of the least-hassle ways of recording raw video at a decent bit depth, which is interesting for someone useless at getting video exposure balanced like me). I'd spotted the camera and gone "ooh", but not the recording medium, not that it's a deal breaker - and I could use whatever UHS-II SD cards I get for a future D850 if I don't care about 60fps raw. (I'm not quite clear whether you can record full speed raw over the USB port, but that's another option.)

Of course, it does also mean that the original PCC might be about to get cheap. And if you don't need 4K, it's still quite a tempting way to get decent raw video, at least compared with what my D810 will produce.

Heads up: Thom Hogan has been wandering around NAB, and apparently got news from both (new) Lexar and ProGrade about XQD.

Executive summary: Lexar will produce XQD again, but are starting from scratch (having run out of old stock), so expect stock in June at the earliest. ProGrade aren't doing XQD, and expect CFexpress to work in Nikon cameras only if Nikon produce a firmware upgrade - which from Nikon is a "maybe".

Thanks Andrew. I had expected that some royalty (to Sony) issue maybe holding up Longsys/Lexar's XQD production. What I didn't know was that Longsys wasn't producing XQD for Micron/Lexar before.

Concerning CFX cards, currently there is exactly zero devices out there that require CFX cards, although I expect next generation of sports cameras may require them and so will future 8K video cameras. As a new type of memory card, I am sure CFX suppliers are looking at owners of the five Nikon DSLRs models that use XQD as a huge potential customer pool. Hopefully their prices will be competitive. If CFX is 2, 3 times as expensive as XQD with equivalent storage capacity, they would price themselves out of the market for Nikon.

I was never concerned about having only one supplier for XQD cards, mainly because I firmly believe that if there is demand, someone will supply it. It is very much in Nikon's interest that there are multiple suppliers (more than 2) for XQD/CFX cards for Nikon cameras.

Finally Adroama has the 32G Lexar XQD card with reader package in stock. The other sizes are not yet available at this point and B&H is still showing "discontinued." Hopefully this is a positive sign that Lexar XQD is finally coming back.

Lexar Professional 2933x XQD

I would wait another week or two and see whether the other sizes are also available, at multiple stores. If Adorama gets new supply, B&H cannot be far behind. If so, I think it would be safe to assume that Lexar XQD production has resumed under the new owner Longsys. Otherwise, maybe they just found some left over stock in some warehouse somewhere. :)

I also can check with Lexar directly again a bit later.

BTW, if this is new production from a new factory, we'll also see whether there is any difference in quality. I have 5 Lexar XQD cards and 3 Sony ones. Some of those are 2 years old. So far I have not had any XQD failure yet.