If you wanted to buy a CFexpress Type A Card a few years ago then you really only had Sony, Prograde and Delkin Devices to choose from and with very little competition the prices were sky high.
Thankfully we now have many more brands on the market and as a result prices have really tumbled over the past year which is great for Sony Shooters.
South Korean company Novachips is the latest company to introduce a CFexpress Type A memory card and at a price that almost sounds too good to be true.
Founded in 2009 Novachips are a leading provider of flash-based storage processors and drivers.
In early 2025 they brought four new CFexpress Type A 4.0 memory cards to market with some impressive specifications and even more impressive price tags:
- CFexpress Type A 4.0 Express 800GB (Amazon) $262.00
- CFexpress Type A 4.0 Express 1.6TB (Amazon) $329.00
- CFexpress Type A 4.0 Extreme 330GB (Amazon) $238.00
- CFexpress Type A 4.0 Extreme 660GB (Amazon) $358.00
If you want a card with 1TB or more capacity then these are your current choices:
- Angelbird 1TB AV PRO CFexpress 4.0 Type A Memory Card ($499.99)
- Sony 1920GB CFexpress Type A TOUGH Memory Card ($1,398.00)
- Lexar 1TB Professional GOLD CFexpress 4.0 Type A Memory Card ($649.00)
- Nextorage 1TB NX-A2AE CFexpress 4.0 Type A Memory Card ($399.00)
- Nextorage 2TB NX-A2AE CFexpress 4.0 Type A Memory Card ($699.00)
- Exascend 1TB Essential Series CFexpress Type A Memory Card ($539.90)
- Wise Advanced 1TB CFexpress 4.0 Type A Memory Card ($599.99)
The Novachips CFexpress Type A 4.0 Express 1.6TB card is priced at just $329.00, easily making it the least expensive type a card on the market today.
So is this too good to be true?
Well I reached out to Novachips who kindly sent me their 1.6TB Express card for review.
I tested it in my Sony A1, A7R V and A7 IV to find out how it performs in-camera and also ran it through Blackmagic Disk Speed Test.
Build Quality & Specs
The card itself is constructed from a metal case with a sticker free label to help with heat control. It is VPG 400 Certified so it can sustain a minimum write speed of 400 MB/s.
“All of our cards have a custom-developed architecture for maximum heat dissipation, which is crucial for stable recording on cameras,” Novachips says. “The faster the card is, the hotter the card gets, therefore, good memory cards must have an architecture to dissipate this heat effectively.”
The card features the latest CFexpress 4.0 standard which unfortunately none of Sony’s current line-up of camera actually support, however it is backwards compatible with 2.0 and you can still take advantage of the faster speeds when transferring files providing you use a 4.0 reader.
The 1.6TB card features a sustained write speed of 1300 MB/s and sustained read speed of 1600 MB/s. The 800GB card has a 1200 MB/s sustained write speed and the same sustained 1600 MB/s read speed.
It’s refreshing to see the sustained speeds on the label as opposed to the maximum burst speeds which most manufacturers go with.
In-Camera Tests
Testing the cards in-camera provides a much more accurate idea of how they perform in the real world as opposed to simply using benchmarking software.
I tested the Novachips Extreme 1.6TB card in my Sony A1, Sony A7R V and Sony A7 IV.
I simply test how many shots can be captured before the buffer is hit then how long it takes to clear the buffer. Slower cards will typically capture fewer shots and take longer to clear the buffer.
| Camera | Uncompress RAW Images Before Hitting Buffer | Time to Clear Buffer |
|---|---|---|
| Sony A1 | 90 | 10.51s |
| Sony A7R V | 408 | 6.52s |
| Sony A7 IV | 500+ | < 2.00s |
These results are very impressive and make the Novachips card one of the fastest from the 21 cards that I have tested so far for my CFexpress Type-A Card Guide.
I also tested the video performance by recording a movie in XAVC S-I 4K (600M) with my Sony A1 and I was able to record 60 minutes of video before my A1 overheated (with auto power off set to high).
Blackmagic Tests
For these tests I used the Blackmagic Disk Speed Test software together with the ProGrade Digital CFexpress Type A USB 4.0 reader.
Novachips do also have their own 4.0 Type A reader (Amazon) but I’ve not had the opportunity to test this yet.
Again the results were pretty impressive and put the Novachip Express card at the top of my Blackmagic disk test results from 21 cards tested.
The claimed sustained write speed of 1300 MB/s was easily achieved but the read speeds fell a little short. It could be that we see better results when using the Novachips card reader, so I’ll have to try and test this sometime.
Conclusion
It’s not very often that I’m surprised by the performance of a memory card but the Novachips Express card definitely surprised me and in a good way!
For the price I was expecting it to have similar levels of performance to the Pergear cards, not Delkin or Angelbird.
There is no doubt that this card performs very well and the current price per GB make it the cheapest CFexpress Type A card on the market today.
Of course, reliability is also a very important consideration when it comes to evaluating memory cards and it’s just a little too early to say how the Novachips cards are going to hold up in the long run.
I plan to use these cards more myself to see how they perform over the longer term and I’m sure we will also start to see more customer reviews throughout 2025.
If you require a larger capacity card for photography or videography then the Novachips card is definitely one to consider.
Currently Novachips are only distributing their cards in North America through Amazon but they will also hopefully be available in the UK soon through Memory Wolf which as some of you know already is a store that I run.
Leave a Reply