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Kingston recently sent us 128GB samples of their latest Canvas Plus SD cards, including the Canvas React Plus, Canvas Go Plus and Kingston Canvas Select Plus. How good are these cards, and should you buy one?
The three Canvas Plus versions we are looking at cover all manner of uses. The Canvas React Plus range are the fastest of the three, with speeds of up to 300MB/s for reads and 260MB/s for writes. The cards were designed for use in 4K/8K professional cinema cameras.
Next up in terms of speed is the Canvas Go Plus. Designed for use in 4K video production, DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, they are rated at up to 170MB/s and 90MB/s for read and writes respectively.
The slowest of the cards that Kingston sent us is the Canvas Select Plus SD range. They might have the slowest speeds, up to 100MB/s read speeds and writes up to 85MB/s but they have the widest range of capacities, from 16GB to 512GB.
Canvas React Plus SD / microSD
The flagship Canvas React Plus series are, at the time of writing, the fastest SD cards Kingston offer with speeds of up to 300MB/s for reads and 260MB/s for writes. Designed for use in 4K/8K professional cinema cameras, the React Plus are rated at Class 10, UHS-II, U3, V90 cards and come in four capacities; 32GB, 64GB, 128GB (the card Kingston sent for review) and 256GB. Out of the box the 32GB card is formatted as FAT32 while all the others are exFAT. The cards come bundled with a USB 3.2 Gen 1 MobileLite Plus SD Reader.
The microSD version of the React Plus has been designed for use for UHS-II 4K/8K video recording, HD drones and action cameras and has A1 app support for Android. It comes in three capacities, 64GB, 128GB and 256GB with read/write speed ratings of 285MB/s and 165MB/s respectively.
Like the full-sized SD version the card comes bundled with a reader, this time the MobileLite Plus microSD Reader.
Canvas Go! Plus SD / microSD
The Canvas Go! Plus SD range has been developed for mirrorless cameras, DSLRs and 4K video production. They are Class 10, UHS-I, U3, V30 cards and are available in four capacities; 64GB, 128GB, 256GB, 512GB. All have a 170MB/s rating for read speeds with write speeds of up to 70MB/s for the 64GB card and up to 90MB/s for the three others. The Canvas Go! Plus MicroSD has the same four capacities (we tested the 128GB version) and speeds.
The microSD version has been designed to be used in drones, action cameras, 4K video production and thanks to its A2 app performance class support, Android devices.
Canvas Select Plus
The Canvas Select Plus SD range are aimed at HD 1080p and 4K Video cameras and are variously rated according to capacity. There are five cards in the line-up; 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB, 256 GB and 512 GB. The 32GB and 64GB cards are rated as UHS-I Speed Class, U1, V10 with read speeds of up to 100MB/s with the rest of the range rated as UHS-I Speed Class, U3, V30 with up to 100MB/s read speeds and writes up to 85MB/s.
The microSD version of the Select Plus has been designed for use in point and shoot cameras and supports Android devices with A1 app class performance. The microSD version adds a 16GB card to the range making a total of six capacities and has the same speed ratings as the standard card.
To test the drives we used the USB 3.2 Gen 1 MobileLite Plus SD Reader that came with the Canvas React Plus, using the USB 3.1 Gen 2 port in our Intel-based test rig.
CrystalDiskmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using V7.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.
The fastest of the Kingston cards is the Canvas React Plus, with official ratings of up to 300MB/s for reads and 260MB/s for writes. We could confirm those figures with the ATTO benchmark (295MB/s reads, 283MB/s writes) and CrystalDiskMark (308MB/s reads, 299MB/s writes).
The Canvas Go! Plus is rated up to 170MB/s for reads and up to 90MB/s for writes, and when tested we managed to squeeze a little more out of the drive. With the ATTO benchmark, we saw 177MB/s for reads and 123MB/s for writes, and with the CrystalDiskMark we saw reads of 185MB/s and writes of 130MB/s.
The slowest of the bunch is the Canvas Select Plus and this time we couldn't quite hit the maximum ratings for the card, officially 100MB/s read and 85MB/s. ATTO produced scores of 92MB/s and 60MB/s for read and writes, while with CrystalDiskMark we saw reads of 98MB/s and writes of 61MB/s.
In our throughput tests, the Canvas React Plus reads peaked at 228MB/s, a fair bit short of the official maximum of 300MB/s. Writes, on the other hand, peaking at 283MB/s is some 20MB/s better than the maximum 260MB/s.
The Canvas Go! Plus bettered both official maximums during the throughput test. Reads peaked at 177MB/s, some 7MB/s better than the official maximum but writes saw a more impressive 46MB/s increase on the official maximum of 90MB/s.
The Canvas Select peaks for both reads, 93MB/s and writes, 58MB/s fell short of the official maximums of 100MB/s and 85MB/s for reads and writes respectively.
Kingston supplied the Canvas Go! Plus and Canvas Select Plus in microSD formats so we did some testing in an old Galaxy S5 we had lying around. We performed timed tests on photo folder (184 photos) and video folder (50 videos) transfers and a time test for moving an app from the phones internal storage to the card. We also did a read/write test on both cards.
To test real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 256GB Samsung SSD850 PRO.
- 10GB Photo folder – (304 files – 171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
- 5GB (1.5bn pixel) photo.
- 21GB 8K Movie demos – (11 demos)
- 16GB 4K Raw Movie Clips – (9 MP4V files).
None of the three cards show any real problems dealing with our real life file transfers.
Kingston's Canvas range of SD cards consists of five product lines and in order performance, fastest first, these are; React Plus (standard SD and microSD), Go! Plus (standard SD and microSD), Select Plus (standard SD and microSD) React (microSD) and Select (standard SD). Kingston kindly provided us with samples of the React Plus (standard SD), Go! Plus (microSD) and Select Plus (microSD) cards to look at.
The flagship of the range, the React Plus is rated up to 300MB/s and 260MB/s for read and writes respectively for the standard SD card. We confirmed those speed ratings with the ATTO and CrystalDiskMark benchmarks with the 128GB card producing read/write scores of 295MB/s and 283MB/s respectively in ATTO and 308MB/s reads and 299MB/s writes in CrystalDiskMark.
The Canvas Go! Plus microSD is rated up to 170MB/s for reads and up to 90MB/s for writes. Under testing, we managed to get a bit more out of the 128GB drive. When tested with the ATTO benchmark we saw 177MB/s for reads and 123MB/s for writes and saw further gains in CrystalDiskMark with reads of 185MB/s and writes of 130MB/s.
With the Canvas Select Plus microSD card, although we got close to the maximum read speed of 100MB/s (92MB/s ATTO, 98MB/s CrystalDiskMark) we were a little way off when it came to matching the official write figure of 85MB/s, with ATTO producing a figure of 60MB/s and CrystalDiskMark, 61MB/s.
All the cards are backed by a lifetime warranty and there is a 2-year warranty on the bundled card readers for the Canvas React Plus series.
We found the three cards reviewed on Insight UK. The Canvas React Plus 128GB SD card is £112.79 (inc VAT) HERE, Canvas Go! Plus microSD is £23.99 (inc VAT) HERE and the Canvas Select Plus microSD is £17.99 (inc VAT) HERE.
Pros
- Plenty of speed and capacity options.
- Canvas React Plus cards come with a fast reader.
Cons
- Canvas React Plus pricey.
KitGuru says: Kingston's Canvas SD range covers everything from professional 4K/8K cinema cameras down to point and shoot cameras, and pretty much everything in between.
