Review: Prograde Digital memorycards & workflow-reader

Prograde Digital is a 2017 founded company for ex-Lexar employees. Some of you might remember the story from last year when Micron decided to dump Lexar-brand for some reason. After that, Lexar was bought by chinese storage-company.At the moment Prograde Digital focuses on high-end, super-fast memorycards and card readers. Earlier this year they launched first products, CFAST 2.0- , UHS-II cards and memorycard-reader, or as Prograde Digital calls its; workflow-reader.As we all know, camera-markets are already saturated by various cards on different brands. So what`s the difference to the other products ? Lets find out.Prograde Digital promises to deliver performance, quality and reliability in form of quality products and customer support.Lets look at the SDXC UHS-II V90-memory card first. Physically; UHS-II card has an extra row of pins to provide faster data rates, obviously, this means that compatible reader is needed to achieve full speed. UHS-II will also work on older readers, but, slower.Prograde Digital promises 250MB/sec read speed and 200 MB/sec write. Each and every card has a unique ID so in case of problem with a camera, support can track and solve the case.I used for benchmarks Crystaldisk Mark 6.0.1 64-bit version. I run tests on two computers; HP Mobile zBook workstation which has built in thunderbolt-3 connectors (which are compatible with USB 3.1 G2) and my desktop workstation which has USB 3.1 G2 USB-C connector. Who told that new usb-standards are easy ?!?So, manfacturer promises some level of performance (read 250MB/s, write 200MB/s). Tests were run 5 times and as you can see, the promised level is easily surpassed. Sequential read 272 MB/s, write 221 MB/s. Wow ! Huge difference to my "older" compact flash and sd-cards.Another testrun with Aida64. Nothing wrong here either. Readspeed is stable thruout the card as expected for flashdrive. Benchmarked speed is little lower than on Crystaldiskmark-test because of the smaller block and filesize used on test.The workflow-reader is USB 3.1 Gen2 and uses USB type C as connector. Cable is included in the package. Reader feels sturdy construction, plastic cover but heavierthan other similar products. One cool feature is magnetic bottom so youcan attach the reader for example on laptop`s cover or side of you display or case.So, how does it feel in use? Camera (Canon 5DMk4 and EOS M5) writes at the same speed and keeps up in the pace with the photographer. But, when you have shot full day on the field or at the studio and cards are full with photos and videos, the speed difference will be inevitable. Compared to my older cards the copying speed from the card to computer is nearly 2.5x times on compact flash-cards (Sandisk Extreme) and even bigger with sd cards (Lexar 633x). Cards are available as 64GB, 128GB and 256GB. CFast 2.0-cards comes a 128GB, 256GB and 512GB. CFast-cards are not tested as I dont have suitable camera.Prograde Digital products can be bought straight from their site: https://shop.progradedigital.com/