Novachips Debuts First 4TB Capacity CFexpress Card with VPG 800 Rating

Novachips, a memory manufacturer out of South Korea, has announced two new CFexpress Type B memory cards, one of which is the first to combine 4TB capacity with VPG 800 verification.

The Novachips Extreme CX4B and Express CX4B deliver a variety of speeds, performance promises, and capacities and are “designed to meet the growing demands of professional photographers and video creators who require reliable, sustained write performance for high-bitrate recording and long-duration workflows.”

The Extreme and Express lines are optimized for different professional use cases, but both have obtained the still relatively rare VPG 800 certification.

Firstly, the Extreme series comes in 600GB and 1TB capacity options and is built using SLC mode flash memory and what Novachips describes as “enhanced internal over-provisioning” to deliver stable speeds even under heavy stress. Also, because of how CFexpress 4.0 works, the cards are also VPG 400 verified — it will have a minimum sustained write speed of 400MB/s even as the card approaches full capacity. In short, CFexpress 4.0 is backward compatible with 2.0, but with caveats.

“While CFexpress 4.0 is backward compatible — meaning using a new card in an old camera or card reader won’t actively hurt performance — it is only backward compatible to the CFexpress 2.0 speeds. To get more, photographers and filmmakers will have to wait for camera companies to release new camera bodies with upgraded hardware,” PetaPixel explained in 2023.

That means even if a card is VPG 800 guaranteed, that doesn’t actually mean it would by default be VPG 400 guaranteed. In this case, Novachips went the extra mile and made sure that its backward compatibility still performs to the maximum of CFexpress 2.0, meaning the card will work today and is future-proof as well.

To go even further beyond, Novachips also has the Express series, which is only available in 2TB and 4TB capacities and is specifically tailored to VPG 800 performance — it doesn’t promise VPG 400 with backward compatibility. VPG 800 verification remains relatively rare, and prior to Novachips’ announcement, the highest capacity available with VPG 800 verification was 1TB — the Essential Pro Max cards from Exascend, the CB500 from Biwin, and the GoldII cards from Chipfancier. Novachips becomes the first to offer double those capacity options, and then double them again.

“CFexpress 4.0 represents the next step forward for professional media,” SJ Yoo, Product Manager at Novachips, says. “With this launch, we are delivering CFA-certified VPG 800 performance across multiple capacities and memory architectures, giving creators the confidence that their storage will perform consistently in real-world production environments.”

Pricing and availability weren’t revealed, as the company says that they will vary depending on the region.

Image credits: Novachips