Kingston is a brand that I’ve been well aware of for many years now — and going into this project, I’ll admit that I had a bias against them — I’ve had other projects where I’ve used both Kingston and SanDisk cards, and multiple Kingston cards failed on me whereas the SanDisk cards didn’t. Regardless, I wanted to give them a fair chance.
This particular card was suggested to me by Reddit user u/Magnets (link) — and after the stellar performance results I got from the SDCG3, I had high hopes for how this card would do.
Looking at the registers doesn’t reveal a whole lot of differences between the SDCG3 and the SDCG4 — probably the most significant difference is an increase in size (by 63MB, to be exact). They meet all the criteria that I set out for determining what’s considered a name-brand card, so they’ll go into the name-brand bin.
Performance — on the two samples that I’ve tested so far — has been pretty good. They didn’t quite edge out the SDCG3, but they did very well regardless. All performance measurements were above the 90th percentile.
These cards bear the U3, V30 and A2 marks. (The Class 10 mark appears on the package, but does not appear on the card itself.) Performance was good enough to qualify for the U3 and V30 marks, but not good enough for the A2 mark. However, I’ll throw in my standard disclaimer: my performance testing methods do not align with those prescribed by the SD specification; it’s possible that they would have done better had they been tested under proper conditions.
On the endurance testing front:
- Sample #1 has survived 10,535 read/write cycles and has not yet experienced any errors.
- Sample #2 has survived 8,896 read/write cycles and has not yet experienced any errors.
- Sample #3 has survived 3,442 read/write cycles and has not yet experienced any errors.
Overall? These things excel in performance — although admittedly, I was slightly disappointed that they didn’t do as well as their predecessor, the SDCG3. They’re a little on the skimpier side, but I think that’s worth it given how well they perform. As far as endurance — it’s too soon to tell. I’ll have to wait for more data to come in before I can make a final call here.
January 9, 2026 (current number of read/write cycles updates automatically every hour)