Both Compact Flash cards we presented today have been developed to deliver fast transfers for media enthusiasts or professionals. They offer a generous 128GB storage space and seem to be compatible with many different brand hosts, capable of handling 1080p, 3D, and 4K video formats.

The cards can be protected with the downloadable software packages offered by both Lexar and Toshiba, in order to help you recover some photo and video data in the event of data loss.

Transfer rate tests did not unveil a winner. Both the Lexar Professional 1066x CompactFlash and the Toshiba EXCERIA PRO - C501 went head to head in most benchmarks, scoring read and write speeds close to those reported by Lexar and Toshiba - about 135-150 MB/s in sequential reads and a bit slower at 105-110 MB/s in sequential writes. On the other hand, they both suffered in random write tests with small files, but that was expected from this kind of media.

The CF cards were also compatible with two digital cameras we had in our labs - the Canon 5Ds and 1D X. Write speeds with these cameras was at the 90-99 MB/s range.

Besides compatibility with cameras, another important aspect of an CF card is its reliability. You may have heard about corrupted files when shooting large RAW files, or about CF cards that return errors after heavy usage or after a relatively short period of time after purchase.

Fortunately, we did not experience any issues during our testing with digital cameras, although we plan to update this review in case we experience any reliability problems in the future. Don't forget that the Lexar CF is covered by a limited warranty, which is 10 years if you have purchased the card from Germany, while Toshiba is also offering a 5 year warranty for the Exceria PRO.

It's time to get down to the price of these cards. Lexar is selling the Professional 1066x 128GB CF for $233 (;euro;2015), but it also retails over Amazon.com and B&H for just $143.

The Toshiba EXCERIA PRO - C501 128GB is not currently available in many online shops. We have spotted online in European stores for €300-350 (!). Obviously, the price is very high compared to Lexar's card, making Toshiba's offering less attractive even for the professional user. Whether the EXCERIA PRO - C501 128GB deserves some extra credits in terms of reliability is something we cannot answer now. But could reliability justify a double price?

In any case, the Lexar Professional 1066x CompactFlash card seems to be the winner of this round.