I'm glad I did some research on youtube (LOL).
It looks like the extreme pro is not worth the money after all.
I applaud the youtuber that actually went out and did the real-world tests on those cards. But in my opinion that test is flawed and misleading. Basically his results were as follows:
$10 PNY 20MB/s SD card took 20 seconds to clear the buffer
Sandisk 45MB/s Extreme SD card took 16 seconds to clear the buffer
Sandisk 95MB/s Extreme Pro SD card took 16 seconds to clear the buffer
finally
Sandisk 60MB/s Extreme CF card took about 7 seconds to clear the buffer.
Looking at those results you'd think the Extreme Pro SD was a waste and one could argue that the Extreme SD card was also a waste of money.
I think the youtuber made the assumption that the write speeds of the camera were:
1. equal between the SD and CF slots
2. the camera's write speeds of the SD slots could write faster than any card you put in there could accept (in this case faster write speeds than the 95MB/s Extreme Pro card)
From quick research I found this article pertaining to the camera he tested (
Canon 5D Mark III).
Blog @ BorrowLenses
Basically the article claims the speeds between the SD and CF slots are different. And more importantly that the SD slot is only rated as 133x (which I believe translates to 20MB/s). To me this explains why the CF card clears much faster AND points to me why the Extreme and Extreme Pro have identical test times. They clear at the same rate because they are capped at 20MB/s. As for the PNY card taking longer even though it's rated at 20MB/s. I can only guess that you get what you pay for, in this case $10.
I think if he really wanted to illustrate his point he should have done apples to apples. Use a Lexar card rated for the same speeds as the Sandisk counter-parts and compare.
Here's an excerpt from that article:
“…YOU DO NOT want to put a card in the SD slot. Why? Because, for some reason unbeknownst to me, Canon decided to build the 5D Mark III with one very fast CF slot which supports the newer UDMA7 protocol and a standard SD card slot which does NOT support the high speed standard (called UHS – for Ultra High Speed). This is really strange because many other cameras have come out with UHS1 compatible slots over the last year. Without UHS support, the top speed that can be achieved by the SD card is 133x. This is true even if you purchase a 600x SD card and insert it in the camera. The best you will get is 133x…”