Kingston Offering 64GB SDXC Card For $500Kingston Offering 64GB SDXC Card For $500

Need a lot of storage wrapped in a small package? Kingston's got your back with a new 64GB SDXC (Secure Digital eXtended Capacity) card. It's small, fast, and stores gobs of data. Too bad it costs a hefty $500.The new 64GB SDXC card is shipping as of today and will reach stores by the end of the month, says Kingston. It won't work in mobile phones, but it should work in some laptops, digital video cameras, digital cameras, and other equipment that accepts the SDXC cards. Sadly, that's a limited number of devices, but that will change over time.

Kingston says its new SDXC card is compliant with the SDA Memory Card Standard Version 3.01, UHS-1. These standards will let the card transfer data at the rate of 104Mbps, though this card from Kingston maxes out at read speeds of 60Mbps and write speeds of 35Mbps. One of the more limiting aspects of the SDXC card is that it uses the exFAT file system. That means it is not backwards compatible with SDHC or SD cards.

SDXC is a newer standard, and there aren't too many host devices that support it yet. According to Kingston, some new cameras and camcorders from Canon and Panasonic will soon be compatible with the SDXC format. The company believes that other gear, such as, HDTVs, media players, navigation devices, and computers (as long as it accepts exFAT), will be compatible with SDXC soon.

The card has a MSRP of $500. Ouch. The SDXC standard will eventually support such cards up to 2TB (yes, that's terabytes).