Pergear Launches Their 256 GB CFexpress Type A Card: Does Budget and Type A Make Sense?

For Sony shooters, most modern bodies offer a choice: inexpensive SD cards or the pricier Type A cards that offer far higher performance. Pergear’s latest Type A card is designed to offer much of the performance of the Type A form factor, but at a more budget-friendly price per GB. In this review, I’ll test out the 256 GB model to see if it really delivers on the value promised.

The Stats

Pergear has shown both 256 GB and 512 GB models of this card. In today’s testing, I’ve got the 256 GB model in the studio. I would expect only minor differences between these models, as Pergear’s marketing materials show the 512 GB only coming in about 20 MB/s faster than the smaller model.

These cards are CFexpress Type A, a form factor typically associated with Sony’s modern bodies like the a7R V, a7S III, A1, A9 III, and FX cameras. Compared to SD cards, Type A cards are a little thicker, often with a metal casing. Type A cards also have far faster speeds when both reading and writing. This can help your camera’s buffer clear faster when shooting long bursts, as well as accelerate imports.

Performance

The Pergear 256 GB card is rated at 780 MB/s read and write. While I’ve recently seen some faster Type A cards, doing over 750 MB/s and 350 MB/s sustained still puts these cards far beyond SD cards. For reference, very fast SD cards will do 300 MB/s and only 90 MB/s sustained.

One thing manufacturers have gotten better about is aligning their listed performance figures with real-world results. In testing, I was getting writes around 765 MB/s and reads at 756 MB/s, with offloads of raw images and video coming in around 750 MB/s.

Overall, I’m very pleased with those numbers. Those results translate into half the time spent importing, or a massive extension of your camera’s buffer when shooting extended raw bursts. For some Sony cameras, it also translates into a broader choice of video frame rates and codecs.

Just about the only thing missing is a VPG certification. The Video Performance Guarantee is essentially a firmware flag telling the camera the card can do a guaranteed level of write performance. VPG200, for instance, means the card can do 200 MB/s sustained. To my knowledge, current cameras aren’t really checking this, but if they are in the future, this card may not qualify for whatever is locked behind that rating.

Value

Overall, the Pergear 256 GB is a really solid value. For the lower price, you still get almost all the benefits of the most expensive Type A cards: fast imports, far better buffer performance, unlocked video modes, and the better physical durability of Type A over SD. Pergear also lists a 5-year warranty, a generous period for a memory card.

Type A cards are tough to recommend to everyone. It’s tough to push SD cards to the limit, even with today’s cameras. Generous buffer sizes have kept up with the remarkable advances in frame rates, meaning you have to really be hammering your camera to run into a buffer issue. Meanwhile, most photographers aren’t under a tight enough deadline to make import speeds truly matter.

However, with Pergear’s Type A card coming in at a price of just $129, it’s a lot easier to justify the purchase. At just 50 cents per GB, these cards are far less expensive than competing Type A cards and are somehow even cheaper than many high-performance SD cards (despite SD cards being about half as fast in a best-case scenario).

If you’re interested in adding the Pergear Type A card to your bag, they’re available for purchase now from Amazon.

What I Liked

• Outstanding price per GB
• Competent performance for Type A cards
• Strong warranty terms

What Could be Improved

• No VPG certification