Recently developed IGBT press pack devices have become a competition for IGCTs in high power industrial applications. This paper presents an overview of state-of-the-art medium voltage power semiconductors with active turn-off capability. A new 85 mm, 4.5 kV, 1.2 kA press pack SPT+ IGBT and the corresponding freewheeling diode are characterized at hard switching as a function of the parameters dc-link voltage, load current, junction temperature, stray inductance and gate unit conditions.