A three-year endurance test of nearly 300 SD cards challenges assumptions about brand reputation, highlighting inconsistencies in reliability, SanDisk underperforms despite its popularity, and buyers are urged to verify cards before purchase.
A long-running endurance test of SD cards has highlighted just how uneven the market can be. In a study documented by a Raspberry Pi user known as mikaey00, 284 cards have already been pushed through three years of testing, with another 67 still waiting their turn. The results suggest that brand reputation alone is a poor guide to real-world durability. According to the reporting from XDA Developers and TechSpot, the cards were grouped into consumer, high-endurance and industrial classes to make the comparisons clearer.
Among consumer-grade cards, the strongest performers were led by PNY, Kingston, Delkin Devices, Lexar and Samsung, with Amazon Basics also earning an honourable mention. Tom’s Hardware and TechRadar’s coverage of related large-scale SD and microSD testing points to a similar pattern: the best cards are not always the fastest on paper, but they tend to hold up better under sustained write loads and repeated use. That distinction matters for devices such as Raspberry Pi systems, cameras and recorders, where endurance is often more important than peak speed.
The most striking finding was SanDisk’s relatively poor showing in this particular test. mikaey00 said 28 SanDisk cards had been tested, but only five were still functioning, with one close to failure, and many had died in situations that other brands had survived. That outcome runs against the expectations many users have for SanDisk, which remains a familiar name in consumer storage. But, as the broader testing discussed by TechSpot, Tom’s Hardware and TechRadar shows, SD card reliability can vary sharply even within a single brand and capacity range.
The wider lesson is that buyers should be cautious about assuming all cards from the same label are equivalent. Separate testing covered by TechSpot and Tom’s Hardware found counterfeit and misrepresented-capacity cards, with some failing after very few write cycles, reinforcing the case for buying from reputable sellers. In practical terms, the safest choice is often to match the card not just to the advertised speed class, but to the workload, the source of purchase and the level of wear the device will impose.
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