New Kingston Flash cards? are they any good

I've extensive ( years ) of experience using
CompactFlash media as well as SD. I've gotten
the feeling that the advertised "speed" printed
on these things is, IMO, a generalized opinion
rather then technical fact. One thing for sure.
All these things, CompactFlash and SD chips,
are manufactured in only a few plants. The
construction of them is subcontracted by the
Distributor ( in this case Kingston ). The
same labeled product this month may be manufactured
by a completely different company the next.

There is always and only one production line.
That line is "tuned" to produce the best of
the product and then "tested" after manufacture
for performance. The ones making the highest
points during test get labeled the best. If
all of the parts are tested best then those
needed to be labeled best are and the rest,
even though they are best, are labeled with
lower values. So if you buy a 32x CompactFlash
you may in fact be getting a 266x product.
In many cases this is what happens.

I've used 2x SD chips successfully for recording
video in my T3i. No skips jumps or pauses.
Probably a 10x SD chip labeled 2x.

Quality of these things from production run to
production run, manufacturer to manufacturer runs
from pretty good to appalling. Expect early
failures. There is no really good testing
programs for these things as there are with
Hard Drives. One day an SD chip works great next
day it's DOA and it ain't never come'n back. Consider
these things a consumable commodity just like
toilet paper.

I've worked for a company that used 100's, literally
100's, of CompactFlash chips every month. We generally
used Kingston but when a batch came in bad we'd switch
to someone else and hopefully get a batch of good ones.
 
For years I worked for, and with, a major magnetic
media Company. They had three quality levels of
their product. Good, Better and Best. All three
were manufactured on the same machines and tested
to the same standard and that was Best. The only
difference between Good, Better and Best was
the color of the box and the fact that the box
indicated that the contents was Good, Better
or Best. The exact same manufacturing machine
made product for Radio Shack and WalMart. Same
stuff only labeled different and cheaper. The
whole idea of this is to keep that media
manufacturing plant and machine running 24/7/360.
That's the only way you can make money building
memory media. That fact is still in place today
even with the solid state medias.
 
If you have enough pull with the manufacturers
sales team, lets use Kingston as an example,
he/she will share with you the decode of the
manufacturing label code. Buy enough through
distribution and you can reject a batch based
on an unacceptable manufacturing point and/or
batch. We had to do this several times.
 
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