Samsung has lines that are marketed for use in security cams, these have a high read/write cycle lifetime. They’re worth it for embedded devices like raspberry pi.
I switched to Samsung from SanDisk about 7-8 years ago (when I first discovered this cheating on one of my SanDisk USB sticks) and haven't had any issues.
BTW, there is no need to buy anything fancy for RPi, I just buy the cheap stuff, but I buy much higher capacity than what I need. Overprovisioning this way is cheaper and more reliable in my opinion vs. buying something more exotic.
For example for the most basic RPi install, I'll buy a 64GB microSD card. The card may only ever see less than 10 GB worth of data, but I know it'll last for years with plenty of chatty logs written to it daily.
Source: I've been running RPis from the very first version, and have never had a single card fail on me, ever.
About two decades ago, there was a nice article about a hierarchy of memory cards. The chips are binned:
- Reliable chips were placed in name-brand products
- Defective chips have the defective parts disabled, and were placed in products on tier down. A 16MB chip might be sold as an 8MB.
- Unreliable chips were given various error correcting techniques, and are placed in cheap, off-brand parts, as well as non-critical applications (such as, at the time, answering machines). A common technique was to scatter addresses, so errors were randomly distributed. For answering machines, this meant a little bit of static. For other applications, this meant a bit of ECC would make them quasi-reliable.
Cards and chips down the line failed a lot more than at the top.
I have had a few memory cards fail before. I am glad to pay for top-line parts. The premium I'm willing to pay is in the low tens of dollars, which is what Sandisk used to do.
I've used Kanguru in the past but haven't really looked at USB drives since switching to IODD external SSDs.
You might also look specifically for "Windows To Go Certified" flash drives - not because you're actually going to run Windows from them but because they should meet some decent minimums for speed and flash endurance.
