Sony SF-G Series UHS-II 128GB SDXC Card Review

Introduction

The Sony SF-G Series 128GB UHS-II card promises outstanding performance with read speeds up to 300MB/s and an amazing 299MB/s write speed claim. When the G Series SD cards were announced in February 2017 they claimed the highest write speed of any SD card to date. The cards are produced three capacities: 32, 64 and 128 GB. This review covers the largest of the three, the 128GB SDXC card, model SF-G128/T1 with UPC 027242904347.

The 128GB card is marked U3 for UHS Speed Class 3 which designates cards capable of maintaining at least 30MB/s write speeds for HD and 4K video recording. The back of the card shows it was made in Taiwan. Sony covers the SF-G Series SD cards with a 5-year limited warranty.

When considering a UHS-II card it should be noted that the high transfer rates are only available when used in a UHS-II device. The cards are compatible with Standard SD and UHS-I devices but the speed will be limited in these applications. The UHS-II interface uses a separate row of pins to provide in UHS-II mode. Cameras and card readers lacking those pins will be limited to UHS-I or lower speeds. The card supports SDR104 in UHS-I bus mode which limits speed to 104MB/s.

Performance

The performance of the 128GB Sony SF-G UHS-II card was tested in USB 3.0 card readers. The card reached up to 297 MB/s sequential read speed in UHS-II card reader benchmarks. The highest sequential write speed was 273.2 MB/s. This nearly matches the 300MB/s read speed advertised by Sony, but the write speed was slightly off the 299MB/s claim. The highest speeds were seen using the Sony MRW-S1 UHS-II SD Card Reader. In UHS-I mode the Sony G Series card reached 96.8 MB/s read and 93.3 write speeds.

Card: Sony SF-G 300MB/s UHS-II 128GB
Benchmark: CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 x64
Program settings: 1000 MB, 5 passes, random test data
Operating system: Windows 10 Pro
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z77X-UD3H
Processor: Intel Core i7-3770K @ 4.40GHz
RAM: 32GB DDR3 1600

The 128GB G Series UHS-II card will be tested in cameras. When available, the results for write speed in cameras will be added to the table below.

Cameras tested with this card: Canon EOS R, Canon 77D, Canon EOS M5, Canon Rebel T7i, Fuji X-T3, Nikon D7500, Nikon Coolpix P1000, Panasonic GH5, Sony A9

The following table contains information encoded in the SD card.

Available sizes and prices

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