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 is now the fourth model of Kingston card that I’ve tested. I apparently seem to be testing all things Kingston now, as they’ve honestly surprised me — the data seems to indicate that whatever issues Kingston might have had in the past, they’ve since turned their act around. I obtained this one directly from Kingston’s website (because I couldn’t get it on Amazon for under $15).
This card has the same color-shifting stripe that the Kingston Canvas Select Plus and Kingston Canvas Go! Plus have. Additionally, I’ve noticed now that all of the Kingston cards I’ve purchased for this project — with the exception of the Canvas Select Plus — have been blank on the back. I wonder if this was a cost saving measure?
These cards 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 in my results.
All performance metrics were above average:
- Sequential read: Sample #1 had a sequential read speed that was a little lower than the other two — putting it at the 35th percentile (as of the time of this writing) — but was still slightly above average. The other two samples got sequential read speeds that put them in the 78th and 79th percentiles.
- Sequential write: Sample #2 had a sequential write speed that was a little lower than the other two — putting it at the 58th percentile — but was still just a tiny bit above average. The other two samples got sequential read speeds that put them in the 61st and 62nd percentiles.
- Random read: Sample #1 had a random read speed that was a little lower than the other two — putting it at the 74th percentile — but was still well above average. The other two samples got random read speeds that put them in the 89th and 94th percentiles.
- Random write: Random write speeds were clustered pretty closely together for all three samples. They scored between the 94th and 97th percentiles.
These cards carry the Class 10, U1, and A1 markings. Performance was good enough across all samples to qualify for all of these markings. (Well done, Kingston!)
On the endurance testing front:
- Sample #1 survived 7,227 read/write cycles before it simply stopped responding to commands. It had been error-free up until that point.
- Sample #2 survived 7,115 read/write cycles before it, too, simply stopped responding to commands. It had also been error-free up until that point.
- Sample #3’s first error was a series of bit flips, affecting four contiguous sectors, during round 8,820. It survived until round 10,486, when it stopped responding to commands.
Overall? I was impressed how well these cards performed, especially in random write tests — this is something that a lot of cards struggle with. However, price was a little high (coming in at $0.483 per gigabyte), skimp was higher than average, coming in at 3.10%. And on endurance…while they did outlast their rated endurance, compared to the other cards I’ve been testing, they’re a little below average. That’s disappointing — these are supposed to be high endurance cards, and so far they’ve been the least reliable of the Kingston’s that I’ve tested. Honestly, I don’t think it’s worth it for the price, considering that you can get a Canvas Go! Plus for cheaper.
November 8, 2025