Manfrotto Professional CFexpress Type B

£190-£380 / $250-$400 www.manfrotto.com

Manfrotto only makes its Professional CFexpress type B card in two capacities, 128GB and 256GB. They both have quoted max read and write speeds of 1730MB/s and 1540MB/s respectively and use a PCIe 3.0 interface. Those rates put the cards well within the recommended requirement of at least 250MB/s for recording and playing back 3840 x 2160 60p or 3840 x 2160 50p movies with our Nikon Z 7II.

The Manfrotto cards have the same metal casing on the front, back and sides as the Delkin Devices, Lexar and ProGrade Digital Cobalt CFexpress cards. It gives the cards an extra-robust look and feel.

With the Manfrotto CFexpress card in the Nikon Z 7II with the ISO set to 100, we were able to capture 42 14-bit uncompressed raw files or around 126 Fine-quality JPEGs at 10fps. That’s more or less in line with Nikon’s stated maximum figures, only missing out by a few raw files, but exceeding the claimed JPEG numbers. 4K recording at 60p for 30 minutes also proved unproblematic.

We measured a read speed of 906MB/s and a write speed of 917MB/s. Again, these numbers are down on the claimed figures, but they’re still perfectly satisfactory for recording 4K video at 60p and more.

This translates to waiting less than 29 seconds to transfer 200 files from the Nikon Z 7II. While the measured speeds don’t match those claimed, the Manfrotto CFexpress cards enable you to capture long sequences of images, and you’re not kept waiting around too long when it comes to transferring 45.7Mp images.

The fact that Manfrotto isn’t a brand that you immediately associate with memory cards, and the close physical similarity of the cards to those from Delkin Devices, suggests that Manfrotto isn’t the manufacturer. However, the price and performance make these worthy of attention.

PROS Well-priced; good read/write speeds; robust construction

CONS Limited capacity range; not Manfrotto’s expert area