![panasonic p2 f series panasonic p2 f series](https://d17bck4wpaw2mg.cloudfront.net/att/a/2/7/k/a27k90/s2yj.jpg)
The H, R and A series have all been discontinued in favor of the E series, which has the fastest data transfer rate (1.2 Gbps, or 1200 Mbps).
![panasonic p2 f series panasonic p2 f series](https://static.bhphoto.com/images/fb/394498.jpg)
You’re not likely to come across many of the original H series. As Panasonic puts it, “The four main differences are the transfer speed, price, card lifetime and the type of flash memory utilized”. XG can be ignored, it is just part of a model number.Ĭhronologically, the four series are H, R, A, and E. In short: Unless you need ultimate speed, no matter the cost, or until Panasonic releases a USB 3.0 single-slot card reader, buy what is most affordable. Panasonic simply swapped out the card for us. It happened to be an A series card, but I don’t really think it would have made a difference. I HAVE seen a P2 cards truly fail (go irreparably bad) just once (out of at least a hundred A, R and E series cards we’ve owned over the years), but in that case user error was suspect. What we need from Panasonic is a USB 3.0, single-slot card reader, then the E series cards would truly be the optimal card.
#PANASONIC P2 F SERIES FULL#
There are only a few expensive devices that can read the E series cards at their full speed. If you use a Firewire 800 reader, then the A series is a great match. So if you’ll be using the single-slot USB2 reader (and it’s a perfectly fine reader for many applications), you might as well go with the older R series (640 Mbps). But The PCD2 USB 2.0 Single-slot card reader is going to slow you down to around 300 Mbps anyway. The A series card can dump footage at 800Mbps, given the right card reader and hardware.
![panasonic p2 f series panasonic p2 f series](https://cdn.gearwise.se/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/GWD_7268.jpg)
They’re gathering and dumping footage multiple times per day, and they do this day in and day out. Having said that, I know some news crews for whom the A series still makes sense. I think savvy shooters quickly realized that the E series was going to outlast the P2 format - unless you really do shoot with these cards to FULL capacity, TWICE a day, EVERY day for 2.5 years - and that realization put the slower A and R series in an early grave. The original H series (you won’t see many of these around), R series and the later A series have all been discontinued in favor of the E series, which has the fastest data transfer rate (1.2 Gbps, or 1200 Mbps).