> Higher quality cards such as SanDisk Ultra Mobile or Samsung Pro series should last quite a while when used as a normal "disk" on a system like this.
Nope, it's mainly marketing. Cards from those brands are fundamentally not great for sub million unit purchases. We tried to use some for the root fs for a fairly high availability appliance. If you don't want one in twenty going out in a month (and we figured out a way to make them go out after 8kb/s for 8 hours with a specific access pattern without power drops), then you need 'industrial SD cards'. They'll treat you like adults when it comes to support, will have lot codes that actually map to internal changes, etc. Trying to sell a product with consumer SD cards (yes, even the ones that call themselves 'Pro') is basically a futile exercise.
If you really need durability, there's also a handful of SLC (single level cell) SD cards on the market which will last an order of magnitude longer in terms of writes as compared to consumer level MLC/TLC cards. SLC cards aren't cheap but you get what you pay for.