Lexar has announced the Armor Gold series of memory cards, a virtually indestructible SD card with a stainless-steel construction that is 37 times stronger than typical SD cards and can withstand a crushing force of 370 Newtons. In contrast, regular plastic cards tend to break at around 10 Newtons of pressure. In addition to being physically strong, the stainless steel build bestows the card with superb heat dissipation performance, able to operate in a temperature range of -25ºC to 85ºC (-13ºF to 185ºF).
The card is IPX8 water-resistance rated, IPX6 dust-resistance rated, and can withstand a 5m drop, so it should operate flawlessly in the harshest environments. It features an anti-magnetic and anti-static build with X-ray protection and is UV-proof. Laser-engraving ensures that important information does not wear off, as can be the case with printed cards. A ribless design ensures that there are no flimsy elements to break off and there's no fragile write-protect switch either – a largely redundant feature of SD cards that have a nasty habit of failing and which no one ever uses anyway.
The cards are not only super-strong but offer high performance too, with 280MB/s read and 205MB/s write speeds earning them a Video Speed Class 60 (V60) rating, recording up to 6K 30P video with no lag or frame drops.
There is also a Lexar Armor Silver card, which offers the same rugged construction as the Gold cards and the same read speed, but has a reduced write speed of 160MB/s, which will still be plenty fast enough for most circumstances.
Both the Lexar Armor Gold and Silver cards are sure to be among the best SD cards on the market when they are released soon, as long as they live up to their claims (we hope they prove to be more reliable than the Sony Tough range of CFexpress Type A cards, which have been known to fail under extreme conditions and which forced Sony to issue a recall).
We'll bring you the release and pricing details as soon as we have them.
