Quoted from PinMonk:Looking a bit deeper, I didn't know that Kingston is not a manufacturer, but "brand only" for flash memory. They buy whatever is cheap and rebrand as Kingston for retail sale. Apparently they have bought rejected memory lots in the past and sold them at retail with similar results to what's seen with Stern SD cards failing.
Seems like Stern should consider changing brands to an actual manufacturer of flash memory so there's tighter quality control on this important component.
Samsung is arguably the best right now.