INTRODUCTION

    SD cards may not be anywhere near to the newer CFexpress cards in terms of read & write performance, but they are far more widely used (UHS-I models in particular) and so you can find them in desktop music players/radios, cameras, camcorders, digital photo frames and more. Still even though read & write performance have always been the sole downside of SD cards (and UHS-I especially) manufacturers have pushed the limits and well, even though the UHS-I standard has a theoretical maximum transfer speed of up to 104MB/s (UHS-II up to 312MB/s) we've seen quite a few models achieve far higher numbers. Kingston recently released their CANVAS Go! Plus, SDG4 line of memory cards and today I'll be testing the 1TB SDXC model.

    Kingston Technology Europe Co LLP and Kingston Technology Company, Inc., are part of the same corporate group (“Kingston”). Kingston is the world’s largest independent manufacturer of memory products. From big data, to laptops and PCs, to IoT-based devices like smart and wearable technology, to design-in and contract manufacturing, Kingston helps deliver the solutions used to live, work and play. The world’s largest PC makers and cloud-hosting companies depend on Kingston for their manufacturing needs, and our passion fuels the technology the world uses every day. We strive beyond our products to see the bigger picture, to meet the needs of our customers and offer solutions that make a difference. To learn more about how Kingston Is With You, visit Kingston.com.

    The CANVAS Go! Plus SDG4 1TB SDXC is also available in 64/128/256/512GB capacities (all these also apply for the microSD variant), follows the Class-10, UHS-I, U3 and V30 standards and according to Kingston can achieve speeds of up to 200MB/s in reads and 160MB/s in writes. Needless to say, your device needs to support such speeds (not just be UHS-I compatible) and the same goes for card readers. Also Kingston covers the entire CANVAS Go! Plus SDG4 with a limited lifetime warranty. So, let's see just how faster the latest CANVAS Go! Plus is compared not only to previous lines by Kingston by other brands as well.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE CANVAS GO! PLUS SDG4 1TB

Typically, the card arrived in a blister package the front of which has a clear plastic cover from where you can see the card.

A few words about warranty and several certifications are printed at the rear.

At the top side of the card, we find the capacity, company logo, model and performance.

Since this card is a UHS-1 one there are 9 contacts at the rear of the card.

As usual there's also a write protection switch on the left side of the card.

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 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).

TEST RESULTS

CONCLUSION

    Before I continue, I need to point out that for my review I used not 1 but 3 card readers (2 by Lexar and 1 by Kingston) and the CANVAS Go! Plus SDG4 1TB SDXC produced better results with the Kingston card reader (around 10% difference). Since the same has happened in the past with Lexar cards (performed better with Lexar card readers – I always test using several readers and record the best results in my charts) this may have something to do with certain firmware differences (although it does sound a bit strange, I don't think it's a hardware thing). With that out of the way it’s clear that the CANVAS Go! Plus SDG4 1TB is the fastest UHS-I model in my charts and that says a lot (whether or not it’s the fastest out there, I have no way of knowing). The lifetime warranty is also welcome and should provide buyers with peace of mind, at least to a point (if you have important data on it and it stops working getting a free replacement doesn’t mean much).

    Retailing for USD109.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for 156.29Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de) the Kingston CANVAS Go! Plus SDG4 1TB SDXC UHS-I card is priced extremely well, at least on the other side of the Atlantic (EU pricing does need a tweak). Overall, the CANVAS Go! Plus SDG4 1TB card shows that UHS-I SDXC cards are still a thing and even though I was expecting larger capacities by now even 1TB (soon 2TB) should be plenty for most people and that along with performance warrant the Golden Award.

PROS

- Fastest UHS I SDXC Card
- 1TB Capacity (2TB Soon)
- Lifetime Warranty
- Price (USA)

CONS

- Price (EU)