Like everything new, CFexpress cards are very expensive and just as pricey as SSDs when they first came out. Fortunately, Manfrotto CFexpress cards are a cheaper alternative, costing roughly half the price of the competitors. For the most part, CFexpress cards are aimed at enthusiast professional videographers who will look to CFexpress cards, not as an expense but, as an investment on performance for improving workflow. PCIe is much more capable than USB, which means the file transfer speed for editing stations and archives will be faster as well. Manfrotto's Professional CFexpress Type B card is sure to be an appealing offering, especially if you're a hobbyist who doesn't have a lot of disposable income.
While CFexpress cards are primarily made for very expensive cinema cameras such as the C500 mk II and EOS-1D X Mark III cameras, CFexpress is now being supported by mirrorless cameras, including Panasonic's Lumix S1 and S1R models. If you own a Nikon DSLR camera (D5, D850 or D500) or a mirrorless Nikon camera (Z6, Z7) you're in luck because Nikon released the promised firmware update for these cameras that enables them to support CFexpress Type B memory cards. To download the firmware, you have to go to the Nikon Download Center, find your camera model, select Firmware and download it to your Windows desktop (not the download folder) for it to uncompress and open properly.
Being CFexpress, Manfrotto's Type B card has the same physical dimensions (38.5 x 29.8 x 3.8mm), weight (5 grams) and pin connection as XQD so, you will be able to use the Manfrotto CFexpress memory card in XQD slots. That said, XQD card readers cannot read CFexpress cards but CFexpress car readers can read XQD cards. This means, you will need to either get a dedicated CFexpress card reader or you can simply leave the CFexpress card in the camera and use the USB connection to download files.
CFexpress main selling points are speed and reliability compared to SD cards, making a CFexpress a worthy replacement over SD cards for laptop use, although with CFexpress you cannot write-protect to safeguards against overwriting. CFexpress shares the same super reliability as XQD so, the Manfrotto CFexpress memory card failure rate is extremely low.
If you're contemplating whether to buy the Manfrotto CFexpress card or a XQD card, consider the fact that CFexpress is the newer format so, you are future proofing yourself plus CFexpress supports 8K video. CFexpress cards will also make it quicker for the camera to write files to, although CFexpress cards won't increase the camera's buffer size. This means, you will be able to take the same X amounts of photos before the camera stops to write all those photos to the card before you can continue taking more photos again. When pairing memory cards together you also want to always use two memory cards of the same speed; otherwise, the slower card will slow down the camera's ability to offload the buffer to the faster card. You can buy the Manfrotto CFexpress memory card directly from Manfrotto. Check out other Manfrotto's reviews: Off Road Stunt Pole, Off Road Stunt backpack.