Dash cams are only as useful as the recordings they produce, so it is important to use a suitable MicroSD card for your dash cam to store your video recordings.
Unfortunately dash cams are a rather hostile environment for MicroSD cards. The MicroSD card has to operate under the blistering heat of our Malaysian weather, and the card has to deal with continuous writing of video data to it. On top of that, the dash cam has to continuously delete older video files to write new video files, and it has to do this while storing data at a near 100% capacity.
Therefore we shouldn’t be looking for a MicroSD card focused on performance, but rather one that was designed for endurance, built with hardware and equipped with a firmware that can handle heavy deleting and writing in a reliable manner.
Here are a list of endurance-focused MicroSD cards available in Malaysia:
Sandisk High Endurance
32GB Buy RM33.30 on Shopee
64GB Buy RM49 on Shopee
128GB Buy RM91 on Shopee
256GB Buy RM179 on Shopee
Sandisk Max Endurance
32GB Buy RM44.88 on Shopee
64GB Buy RM66.88 on Shopee
128GB Buy RM128 on Shopee
256GB Buy RM248 on Shopee
Samsung Pro Endurance (red)
32GB Buy RM31.80 on Shopee
64GB Buy RM74.88 on Shopee
128GB Buy RM139 on Shopee
Samsung Pro Endurance (2022 blue)
64GB Buy RM66.50 on Shopee
128GB Buy RM135.90 on Shopee
256GB Buy RM299 on Shopee
Kingston High Endurance
32GB Buy RM40 on Shopee
64GB Buy RM52 on Shopee
128GB Buy RM90 on Shopee
I personally use the SanDisk High Endurance cards in my Thinkware U1000 and BlackVue DR900X dashcams, and endurance cards have sufficient write speed to handle 4K video writing with no issue.
The SanDisk Max Endurance cards are also quite intriguing because they have insanely long warranties – ranging from 3 years for the 32GB all the way up to 15 years for the 256GB, but they are also more expensive than the High Endurance model. Samsung’s Pro Endurance has a 3 year warranty for the 64GB and 5 years for the 128GB. The other endurance cards typically have a 2 year warranty.
UPDATE: Samsung’s 2022 Pro Endurance MicroSD cards with the blue logo are now available, and it looks like they are even more expensive than the prices of Sandisk’s Max Endurance range that we initially reported, priced at up to RM353 for the 256GB card. As for Sandisk Max Endurance, we can no longer find them on local seller listings at previously published prices.
UPDATE #2: Samsung’s 2022 Pro Endurance MicroSD cards with the blue logo gets a big price cut, with the 64GB model now priced at RM66.50 compared to RM110 when it was just launched.
Which MicroSD cards do you use for your dash cam? Drop a comment with your experience below!