PNY EliteX-PRO60 Class 10 U3 V60 UHS-II 256GB SDXC Card Review

An Affordable V60 Option for Content Creation

SD cards are not the most exciting topic, but if you are anything like me you rely on them every day. Content creation (whether you like the term or not) is a massive industry, and even if you don’t put anything out there for public consumption, if you use a camera for video at modern resolutions, you need large, fast storage.

We have looked at one of PNY’s high-performance cards before, with the X-PRO 90. That card offers tremendous read/write performance, but speeds of up to 280 MB/s write and 300 MB/s read just aren’t necessary for most applications. Enter the EliteX-PRO60, which offers transfer speeds of up to 280MB/s read and up to 180MB/s write – the latter a significant reduction from the PRO90, but still more than up to the task for 4K video.

The “60” part of the PRO60 name indicates the V60 Video Speed, “which ensures a minimum sustained read and write speed of 60MB/s, enabling the ability to capture extended lengths of 4K Ultra HD Video”, according to PNY. And this is a UHS-II card, though backwards compatible with UHS-I devices (such as my Sony ZV-E10 camera).

Performance Characteristics

I tested the card in both a Sony ZV-E10 camera and on a PC using a UHS-II card reader. The camera, as mentioned in the introduction, is only a UHS-I compliant device, but of course this card is backwards compatible and there were zero issues using it with the Sony.

The ZV-E10 can record up to 4K (3840 x 2160) at 30p, though I prefer 24p as it is cropped in 4K/30 mode. This may be marketed as a “vlog” camera, but it produces outstanding 4K footage (downsampled from 6K) and can record onto your SD card at up to 100 Mbps with XAVC S 4K.

The PNY EliteX-PRO60 is more than up to the task, of course, as a minimum sustained 60 MB/s is far higher than the ~12.5 MB/s of 100 Mbps video. I recorded several 4K/24 videos at 100 Mbps without any problem. Higher-end cameras shouldn’t present any issues, either, unless you decide to start shooting in 4K/60 at 600 Mbps on an FX3 cinema camera (get a V90 at that point). I assume that if you are looking at a V60 card then consumer video is your intended use, but what about performance with still images – and using very fast burst mode?

The Sony Alpha cameras can shoot 24.2 MP photos up to an impressive 11 fps in their Hi+ continuous mode, and this card presented no obstacle to this, allowing me to shoot a ridiculous number of photos in an alarmingly short period of time. I kid you not, I had 3.58 GB of RAW photos (in Sony’s ARW image format) on the card after just a few seconds of burst testing with the ZV-E10.

When testing the EliteX-PRO60 with a PC, I used a Lexar UHS-II SDXC reader (model LRW450UBNA) which supports transfer speeds of up to 312 MB/s. After configuring the card for better performance in the Windows device properties, I ran a quick CrystalDiskMark (peak performance preset) test:

While the card was easily hitting its max read transfer speed, the write speed – while quite a bit higher than the minimum 60 MB/s of this V60 card – was well short of the max 180 MB/s on the package. I assumed this was a configuration issue, and the first thing I tried was enabling write caching in Windows – and tried is the operative word as Windows informed me that my device did not support this function.

Next, I used DiskPart from the command prompt to clear the drive and then performed a full format of the SD card with the default exFAT file system, but I was still unable to reach writes of even 80 MB/s with the EliteX-PRO60 (though reads went up slightly). I tried two computers, but the read speeds already told me this wasn’t an interface issue.

Write speeds aside, the read performance is very good, and it doesn’t take long to transfer your photos and videos to a PC with average real-world transfers in the 230 – 240 MB/s range (I did actually see 260+ MB/s when moving video clips):

Final Thoughts

I think a card like this PNY EliteX-PRO60 is perfect for mirrorless cameras such as the Sony ZV-E10, with no problems shooting 4K video at the highest bitrate. The card is also quite fast when transferring files to a computer for editing. Overall, while I was puzzled by the write performance when connected to a PC, I have no complaints based on the way I use the card.

While PNY themselves (along with many others) offer higher-performance SDXC options, the pricing of this EliteX-PRO60 UHS-II V60 card is quite competitive. Our 256GB sample retails for $61.99 (Amazon link), which is almost half off the price of a 256GB SanDisk Extreme PRO UHS-II V60, and around $11 less than a 256GB Lexar Professional 1667X UHS-II V60 (based on current Amazon prices).

As far as reliability is concerned, I have only been using the PNY card for a few days now, but I have been consistently using the 256GB X-PRO 90 card PNY sent over in late 2021 for our review, and have never experienced any corruption. This V60 is staying in my ZV-E10 (unless they make me return it).