This is currently my favourite SD card by far. Previously I was using - as my workhorses - a combination of SanDisk Extremes & Extreme Pros, and Lexar 633xs. This is unsurprisingly far, far faster - both in off-loading photos, where the difference is most dramatic (4-6x faster than any UHS-I card), and in recording photos (and video).
I must note that I haven't compared it first-hand with other UHS-II cards, because they're all far more expensive and by all reviews I've seen these Lexars are superior in performance.
In a D500 this card makes a huge difference, given that the D500 can take advantage of UHS-II (at time of writing, August 2016, very few cameras can). Whereas your leading UHS-I cards will give you a buffer depth of maybe a few dozen photos, with the Lexar 2000x cards I'm struggling to recall ever over-running the buffer… you can get at least sixty or so shots (at 10/s) without issue, probably more. And even if you're not relying on such long bursts, it's still surprisingly beneficial that the card clears shorter bursts super quickly, ensuring you can switch into review mode and look at photos you just took immediately thereafter - no delays, no pauses, nada. This might sound trivial, but it's actually one of the big draws to this card for 'normal' use - I didn't fully appreciate this myself until I got used to this card and then went back to a SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s temporarily, and saw the stark difference in the responsiveness of the camera overall.
Even in older camera bodies (that support only UHS-I) this card is still a tad quicker than any leading UHS-I cards (and I have used all of them - Sony, SanDisk, Transcend, Lexar, etc). Most significantly, it's far more reliable - while the camera might still fill its buffer and slow down, the buffer will clear as fast as possible, without fail. Many thousands of photos in this configuration and I've never seen this card cause so much as a split-second delay (beyond the camera's intrinsic limitations). Even the venerable SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s cards, the best UHS-I cards you can get, don't achieve this level of reliability.
The only downside, such that it is, is the price. At time of writing the price is, and has long been, roughly USD$100 (for the 64 GiB model). That's a huge jump above even the upper echelon of UHS-I cards, like the Lexar 633xs and SanDisk Extreme Pro 95MB/s'. I really want to get a whole bunch more of these cards myself - I only have a couple right now - but at that price… unfortunately, no.
A while back these cards were selling for USD$50, here on Amazon, which is when I bought them. At that price they're great value.
P.S. There were issues with *some* of these cards in D500s, which appears to have been a faulty batch (or batches), early on. I expect those faulty cards will have been flushed from distribution by the time of my writing, and have no concerns about that issue specifically in buying these cards now. In any case, if you encounter the issue Lexar will replace the cards, without charge. I haven't seen the issue myself, though, even though my cards were purchased before the D500 compatibility issue was identified (and addressed) by Lexar. Again, not all copies of the cards were affected, even before Lexar fixed the problem permanently.
P.P.S. Nikon released D500 firmware 1.02 to "fix" the Lexar 2000x issue (http://downloadcenter.nikonimglib.com/en/download/fw/191.html) - which is unnecessary given Lexar will replace any such faulty cards anyway. Furthermore, I warn *against* using that firmware, as its workaround is not good - it simply causes the camera to switch to UHS-I speeds if the error occurs, which, yes, will address the error and allow the camera to keep working, but will also completely neuter the card, performance-wise, and defeat the point of buying a pricey, high-performance card. Better to leave your D500 at the earlier firmware version, if you can, so you'll at least clearly know if you're hitting the issue, and can get the cards replaced.
| Special Feature | water proof |
|---|---|
| Read Speed | 300 Megabytes Per Second |
| Item Weight | 1 Grams |
| Warranty Type | Limited |
| Write Speed | 300 Megabytes Per Second |
| Hardware Interface | USB |
| Secure Digital Association Speed Class | Class 10 |
| Product Dimensions | 1.25"L x 0.95"W |
| RAM | 64 GB |
