Exceria Plus 2 TB – Kioxia’s high-end SSD in test

The new Exceria SSDs from the Japanese manufacturer Kioxia have been available in stores since last year. Some readers might still be new to the name Kioxia, but it is the outsourced storage division of Toshiba and thus a company that already has years of experience with SSDs and even produces its own flash memory.

The current product range includes the Exceria in 2.5″ format as well as the Exceria and Exceria Plus in M.2 format. The latter represents the high-end model and belongs to the top group of PCIe Gen3 SSDs with up to 3400 MB/s in read and 3200 MB/s in write. The Exceria Plus is available with capacities of 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB. The 2 TB version of the first generation is available for our test. The second generation of the Exceria Plus has been available in stores for a short time. In the case of the 2 TB version, both models are identical in construction, so the performance is the same.

Specifications

As already mentioned at the beginning, the Exceria Plus is Kioxia’s high-end SSD. It comes in M.2 format with the usual dimensions of 22×80 mm and is connected via PCIe Gen3x4. NVMe 1.3c is used as the protocol. Even though the range of PCIe Gen4 SSDs is constantly increasing, Gen3 is completely sufficient for most applications and often convinces with a much lower price, which is why it is still worth taking a look at it. Kioxia promises up to 3400 MB/s and 3200 MB/s in sequential read and write respectively, as well as up to 680000 IOPS in read and 620000 IOPS in write. These transfer rates make the Exceria Plus one of the fastest PCIe Gen3 SSDs available.

The SSD comes in a plain cardboard box the size of a 2.5″ SSD or HDD. Besides the M.2 SSD, only a manual is included.

Kioxia relies on a blue, double-sided PCB. On the front, there is a black Kioxia sticker that indicates the Exceria Plus model, and on the back, we find another sticker with information about capacity, serial number and other info. Kioxia does without a heat sink or other special features.

Test system

• ASUS ROG Strix B560-F Gaming WiFi Motherboard
• Intel Core i5-11400F processor
• 32GB G.Skill RipJaws V 3200 RAM
• MSI Radeon RX 5500 XT Gaming X 8G graphics card
• TeamGroup T-Force Cardea IOPS 1TB SSD
• Crucial P5 2TB SSD
• Seasonic Focus GX-550 power supply

Performancetest

For an assessment of the performance, we resort to our well-known benchmark course, with the programs AS SSD, CrystalDiskMark, ATTO Disk and HD Tune Pro.

The Exceria Plus leaves a mixed impression in the AS SSD benchmark. Unfortunately, the SSD is only in the midfield of the previously tested SSDs in sequential read, write and 4K rates. It even fell slightly behind the Exceria in some areas. Even repeating the test several times did not change anything. The Exceria Plus showed us a completely different picture in the 4K-64-Thrd and the Copy benchmark, in which the SSD could convince, as well as in the general AS SSD benchmark, in which it was only beaten by the Silicon Power US70, which already uses PCIe 4.0.

In CrystalDiskMark, the SSD confirmed the manufacturer’s specifications. We exceeded the values of 3400 MB/s and 3200 MB/s in sequential read and write by a few MB/s, respectively. The SSD also performed very well in the other tests. Even though this is not part of the usual test, we also checked the IOPS specifications. The manufacturer’s specifications of 680000 and 620000 IOPS for the random read/write speed were determined with the help of CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64 (Q=32, T=8). With 683883 and 656846 IOPS, respectively, we could also surpass these specifications.

The SSD left a mixed impression in the other benchmarks. In the ATTO Disk benchmark, it convinced with mostly good rates and mostly landed in the top group of the SSDs tested so far. In HD Tune Pro, on the other hand, it was only in the midfield.

Overall, the Kioxia Exceria Plus leaves a good to very good impression. Potential buyers with very high demands on the SSD and a high load should also consider that the SSD gets very hot uncooled. At a summer room temperature of 28°C, we reached temperatures of up to 78°C in the test without a heat sink. Kioxia itself states an operating temperature of up to 85°C, but throttling sets in before this is reached, which leads to performance drops. In order to avoid these drops, we rely on the passive cooling of our motherboard.

Conclusion

Kioxia offers a good overall package with the Exceria Plus. The SSD convinces in many tests with a high read and write speed and comes very close to the limits of PCIe 3.0 x4 in some cases. Unfortunately, it does not consistently show this performance everywhere and sometimes falls a bit short of our expectations, which is why it just misses the Gold Award. Furthermore, the SSD gets very hot, so we recommend passive cooling, no matter if from the motherboard or with the help of a separate solution. If you use many write-intensive applications, you should also consider the relatively low TBW value of only 800 TB.

The Exceria Plus is one of the fastest 2 TB SSDs with PCIe 3.0 in M.2 format, but still has a few minor weaknesses. One of them is the price. This is noticeably higher than the competition and thus comes very close to the faster PCIe 4.0 SSDs in some cases.