INTRODUCTION

   Memory cards may have always been among the tiniest storage media around but they've also been among the slowest ones something which has improved a lot lately thanks to the introduction of new standards in performance. Yes, it has taken a long time and yes the most popular models right now are of the UHS-I standard but UHS-II cards are starting to appear in large numbers and with read & write numbers exceeding 300MB/s these are far from slow (as long as your device supports UHS-II cards that is). Of course, more recent standards like UHS-III (up to 624MB/s) and SD Express (up to 3938MB/s) offer much higher read & write speeds but as of now there are effectively almost no such products in the market. 2 years after my review of the Canvas line of SDXC memory cards by Kingston (review here) the new Canvas Plus SDXC line arrived and that's what I’ll be testing today.

   Kingston Technology Company, Inc. is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. Kingston designs, manufactures and distributes memory products for desktops, laptops, servers, printers, and Flash memory products for PDAs, mobile phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. Through its global network of subsidiaries and affiliates, Kingston has manufacturing facilities in California, Taiwan, China and sales representatives in the United States, Europe, Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, Australia, India, Taiwan, China, and Latin America.

   Exactly like in the case of the Canvas Go and Select SDXC models the new Go Plus and Select Plus also follow the UHS-I standard but that's not the case with the Canvas React Plus model since it's based on the UHS-II standard. This means that even though the Canvas Select Plus SDXC card can reach read-write speeds of up to 100-85/MBs and the Go Plus can go even higher at 170-90MB/s the React Plus can go all the way up to 300-260MB/s (again, that is if your device supports UHS-II cards). This performance boost allows the Canvas React Plus to be used both for 4k and 8k recording whereas the Canvas Go and Select Plus models can be used for both Full HD 1080p and 4k recording (images and video). Also just like in the past Kingston covers the entire Canvas Plus line of SDXC memory cards with a limited lifetime warranty.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE CANVAS SELECT, GO & REACT PLUS 128GB

Typically, all three SDXC Canvas Plus cards arrived in blister packages from where you can take a quick look at the cards themselves, their capacities and their certifications.

The available capacities, serial numbers and barcodes and a product description in numerous languages are the things you'll see at the rear.

Both the Select and Go Plus models are shipped alone, only the React Plus is shipped with an SDXC UHS-II reader.

All three cards are manufactured in Taiwan (the second row of pins/connectors of the Canvas React Plus model is what gives it the UHS-II performance boost).

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   Memory cards are pretty much identical to flash drives so to make things easier for everyone we'll be using roughly the same testing methodology to successfully record achieved read and write data transfer numbers. The benchmark suites we'll be using for our memory card tests are HD Tune Pro (Read - Write average and max speeds), AIDA 64 Engineer Edition (Average Linear Read / Random Read - Write performance), Crystal Disk Mark x64 (4GB Read / Write speeds) and ATTO (Average Read / Write speeds). Every test is repeated a total of 6 times after which the average performance numbers are recorded into our charts (0 = we were unable to complete that test).

   As with all our storage reviews all tests are performed on our main rig running Microsoft Windows 10 Pro installation on a HyperX Predator 480GB PCIe SSD with all updates installed up to the day of this review (for ATTO and Crystal Disk Mark cards are formatted using the NTFS file system – however partitions need to be removed for the write tests of both AIDA64 and HD Tune Pro).

* As of April 2020, we'll be using our X299 test rig for SDXC & microSDXC UHS-II (and above) memory card reviews.

TEST RESULTS

CONCLUSION

   One thing you can all take away from today’s review and that’s that both the Canvas React Plus and the Canvas Go Plus are clearly the fastest UHS-I/II SDXC memory cards to ever arrive in the lab. What really steals the show today however is no other than the performance of the Canvas Go Plus SDXC card since it’s clearly 30-80% faster compared to most UHS-I models. Yes, it’s still much slower compared to the React Plus model but considering that your device doesn’t need to be UHS-II compatible I really think that the Go Plus is a much more balanced (and can also be a far more popular) solution.

   Cost is usually the decisive factor when it comes to memory cards and with prices set at USD22.34/22.97/110.48 inside the USA and at 17.99/26.60/87.56Euros inside the EU the Canvas Select, Go and React Plus SDXC memory cards are all priced as they should (especially the Go model). So, at the end of the day the Canvas Select Plus 128GB model may not bring anything new on the table but just like their microSDXC cousins both the Go and React Plus SDXC cards do and for that they get our Golden award.

PROS

- Top of The Charts Performance (Canvas React Plus)
- Fastest UHS I SDXC Card (Canvas Go! Plus)
- Bundled MobileLite Plus SD Adapter (Canvas React Plus)
- Available Capacities (Up To 512GB)
- Price (Canvas Go! Plus)
- Lifetime Warranty

CONS

- Price (Canvas React Plus)