Nikon D4 owners: Sony announced faster S series XQD memory cards

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.

From the official press release:

“Offering sustained read/write transfer speeds of 168MB/s (actual speed), XQD™ S Series outpaces the maximum interface speed limit of Compact Flash cards (167 MB/s).

Partnered with Nikon’s D4 professional DSLR, XQD™ S Series effortlessly captures a non-stop burst of 108 RAW frames3 (at 12-bit compressed RAW, approximately 10.5MB file size). At a shooting speed of 10fps, this lets photographers document the men’s 100m sprint final from start to finish in a single, sustained burst of RAW images.”

The new XQD S Series 64GB memory card will be available later this month. A 32GB version will come in September/October, 2012. Sony will release also a new high-speed driver for the MRW-E80 XQD card reader with Thunderbolt support.