Ultra-reliable memory cards and storage are the most important things for a photographer and filmmaker. If there’s one area where I’m not going to penny-pinch, it’s on a new memory card for my camera. A few months ago, I was approached by a company called Novachips, asking if they could send me their latest memory card and card reader. I’d never heard of them but thought, why not? I’ll take a look.
So the gear arrived, and first impressions—well, it looks good. In front of me on my desk sat some impressive gear, but Nova who? Their website states: “Novachips is a leading provider of a broad range of Flash storage processors and storage drives with breakthrough capacity and scalability.” That went over my head, so I did some digging. It turns out the Korean company has been around for a while and has been making flash storage solutions for large multinational enterprises like data centers, not consumers. That explains the lack of brand presence online, no social media, and a website that is far from consumer-friendly.
Novachips is making incredibly reliable products for enterprises in industries where reliability and performance are paramount. That’s a good thing. One can then assume that quality is carried over to their consumer products like SSDs and memory cards. After a few months of using their products, this appears to be the case.
CFexpress Card Type B
The Express Series 2 TB CFexpress card has a sustained read speed of 1,700 MB/s and a sustained write speed of 1,400 MB/s. This is perfect for my Nikon Z6 III, as I shoot 4K60 ProRes video, which requires around 400 MB/s. With this card, I can even shoot 6K raw footage if required. In my experience, it’s best to buy a memory card with at least 1,000 MB/s sustainable write speed.
Now, with shooting high-quality video or continuous burst shooting, the big problem is heat. Novachips makes their cards without any stickers, as they claim this holds heat in. That makes sense—Angelbird does the same thing, printing directly onto the aluminum casing. Although I’m sure there’s more to it than that. The first thing I did with the card was 30 minutes of ProRes 4K video, and the card was barely warm. So heat dissipation is good. I’m told the real test is shooting 8K video for an hour. I have no need to do that for the work I do, so I didn’t find out. I’m assured, however, this card is tested and good for 8K raw video.
Some more digging, and I find these Novachips cards are RED/Nikon-approved. That’s a good sign. I also discover these cards have been independently tested by the CompactFlash Association and have a VPG (Video Performance Guarantee). VPG guarantees minimum sustained write performance for recording high-quality video.
I haven’t done head-to-head comparison tests with other cards, but I have been using ProGrade and SanDisk cards professionally for my photography and video work. Having now used the Novachips card on a number of projects, I’ve found it to be reliable and seemingly slightly less hot than the other brands I have.
I’ve been using 512 GB cards these past few years, and when shooting video, I have to keep an eye on them because after a few hours of intense filming, they can get full. Using a 2 TB was rather nice because I could insert it and forget about it.
Novachips claims many memory cards have insufficient support in the insert socket and can break. They have addressed this by adding a metal reinforcement.
Card Reader
The card reader is beautifully made out of aluminum and has a premium-quality feel. What’s impressive is it’s capable of 40 GB/s and is MagSafe-compatible. It comes with a nice little zippered hard case and a cable specifically designed for 40 GB/s transfer speeds. The card reader I’ve been using this past year, made by ProGrade, is plastic and feels cheap by comparison.
It performs well and is noticeably faster when downloading a lot of files from a card to my computer.
Conclusion
Novachips has terrible—virtually nonexistent—brand presence. This does not offer any confidence to someone wanting to buy a reliable memory card. But from my experience these past few months, they make superb products to the highest quality. After using their CFexpress card for a variety of photography and video work, I’m impressed. And that memory card reader is a thing of beauty and quality. It’s incredibly satisfying to use and is one of the fastest card readers around.
Novachips are worth consideration when looking to buy a memory card and card reader.
The Novachips Express Series CFexpress Type B 4.0 memory card retails for $399.
The Novachips 40Gbps CFexpress 4.0 Type B Reader retails for $89.99.