Ever since I remember, I had been using only SanDisk SD memory cards until May of last year. I bought a new camera (Nikon D610) at about that time and I thought it was also a great opportunity to buy faster SD memory cards. Adorama ran a special promo on Lexar SD cards (Lexar 32GB Class 10, Professional 600x SDHC UHS-I Memory Cards) so I thought it was perfect timing (I also bought a couple of Lexar's Professional 400x speed SD cards).
The Long Story... but still short
Oh boy... I couldn't be more disappointed, angry and confused (not necessarily in this order). I'm don't mean the speed, these are pretty fast cards, but I'm talking about weird Lexar SD memory cards' errors and corrupted files. At first I thought it was something wrong with my new D610 so I kept testing the camera with Lexar's SD cards. After doing some research online, I found an article in which a person described the error he experienced in D600 when used with specific types of Sigma lenses (the first Lexar SD memory card error I got was with Sigma 70-200mm f2.8 lens mounted to D610). I found a special tool (from the official international SD Card Association) for formatting memory cards so I poped in my Lexar cards and formatted them with this tool. I couldn't replicate the error after hours of further testing with various lenses, camera bodies, etc so I thought the problem was gone... but I was wrong. The second time the corrupted file problem occurred was a few months later with the second Lexar SD Card that was inserted in a different SD slot than before - that made me think that the problem was with the cards. A couple of weeks later the same corrupted file problem occured but now..... with a different camera (Nikon D7000). At that point I was convinced that the problem was with Lexar SD memory cards and not with my new camera.
Look closely (at the bottom of the image) - this is the most often error with Lexar's corrupted files.
How Lexar SD Card Errors and Corrupted Files look like?
The most extreme example of Lexar's error and corrupted file
I guess I should explain how this corrupted file problem looked like. Every now and then when I tried to import a file to my editing software (Lightroom), I would get an error message that it wasn't possible to import a particular file. After looking at the file with Preview (on a MAC), i would notice that the file had colorful lines at the bottom of an image. It's hard for me to say how often such corrupted file problem occurred with these Lexar cards but this type of corrupted file errors are unacceptable for me, especially in situations when I work for a client.
Now what?
Of course, I contacted Lexar and they issued an RMA (Return merchandise authorization) for the memory cards and they said they'll test them and perhaps send me new cards if the old one prove to be bad. So, I'm not yet completely convinced that my little 'adventure' has ended yet because they might either conclude that my old card are fine or they might send me 'new' cards that will produce the same error.
I know that I'll probably stick with SanDisk SD cards for now because Lexar is just not reliable for me.