I’ve purchased many SD cards and USB sticks over the years and I have a few thoughts on them.
You can shop around, do your research, and then buy cheap or expensive ones but regardless of what you buy you will still usually encounter the following:
1. The specs may not be as advertised. It may be slower than advertised for example.
2. It may be a fake. Even if bought from a legitimate source it may still be fake as there are so many of them about.
3. It may just die for no reason and you can’t return it if it has your private data on it so you are out of pocket.
4. It may need resizing on one OS and then fixing for use with another. Especially if being used to install or upgrade an OS like Linux.
5. It may corrupt your data, especially large files.
Smaller cards, especially microSD cards, die quickly in Kindle devices and dashcams. It’s something about how they are mounted and continually written to that just causes them to expire.
I go through SD cards and memory sticks fairly often. I have yet to find a make or model that can last years.