Sony says this new SD card is the world's toughest
Speedy, too. If you want the best SD card for your camera, this could be the one.
SD cards can be pretty flimsy, and that's a problem -- because cameras are increasingly favoring them over the aging-but-durable CompactFlash alternative.
But Sony says its new Tough cards can take an unprecedented beating. They're the world's toughest, according to Sony, thanks to a single-piece design, instead of the typical three-piece sandwich you'll find practically everywhere else.
The design allows the cards to resist a force of 180 newtons, compared to the mere 10 newtons of force required to be resisted by the SD standard. (One newton is equal to 1 kilogram meter per second squared.) Plus they offer IP68 dust and water resistance.
How much force is that really, though? Well, a handy Sony comparison video (below) shows that 50 newtons is enough to snap one of Sony's cheaper SD cards clean in half:
And even Sony's previous Professional series cards started bending at the 50 newton mark, according to a similar video from 2016. Meanwhile, a competitor's cracked before reaching 100 newtons.
Part of the Tough series' success, Sony argues, is that they have fewer points of failure, as you can see here:
The new Tough cards are the fastest ever, too, according to Sony. But perhaps only on a technicality. Their 300MB/sec read speeds and V90 video recording spec are also found in competing high-end cards, while their 299MB/sec write speed is shared by Sony's same line of cards without the Tough label. (As far as we can tell, competitors haven't promised quite that write speed yet; but they're not far off at 260MB/sec or even 275MB/sec.)
Either way, Sony's new cards are nowhere near the 985MB/sec speeds and multi-terabyte capacities promised for future SD cards, should they ever appear. Sony's cards will ship in October in fairly standard sizes of 32GB, 64GB and 128GB, starting at $73 (roughly £56 or AU$100 converted) and topping out at $276 (roughly £212 or $378).