Sony revealed new S Series XQD memory cards that are now officially faster than Compact Flash with transfer speeds of 168MB/s. The Nikon D4 is currently the only camera that uses the new XQD standard. Till now D4 owners could purchase only 16GB and 32GB H Series XQD cards that have maximum read/write speed of 125MB/s.
Up till now Nikon included a free 16GB Sony XQD card and a reader (aprox. $185 value) with every D4 shipment. This seems no longer to be the case and the last Nikon D4 shipments do not include any freebies. The other bad news is that so far I have not heard about another major manufacturer to jump [...]
As of today, all Nikon D4 pre-orders that I know of (in multiple countries, even non-NPS) were delivered with a free 16GB Sony XQD card and a reader (aprox. $185 value).
As you probably already know, the new Nikon D4 is the first and only camera (for now) to use the new XQD memory cards. So far Sony is the only XQD cards manufacturer and Adorama just started taking pre-orders for the 16GB, 32GB versions and the new XQD card reader: Sony XQD Memory Card H-series 16GB [...]
