The Gen 5 storage market is long overdue a shakeup from models that prioritise value over raw speed. Enter Kioxia Exceria Plus G4. While the drive does have a few minor shortcomings, this is largely the SSD many have been waiting for in place of high-end Gen 4 alternatives.
Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 2TB
£160
Pros
- PCIe 5.0 speeds
- Reasonable price
- Low power draw
- Five-year warranty
Cons
- No heatsink version
- No 4TB capacity
Club386 may earn an affiliate commission when you purchase products through links on our site.
How we test and review products.
As the saying goes, if you want something done right, do it yourself. Kioxia has leveraged decades’ worth of behind the scenes experience designing NAND Flash for other storage manufacturers to produce first-party drives, and Exceria Plus G4 is at least five years in the making.
Kioxia firing on all cylinders here. Instead, this SSD is a calculated move by the brand to plug a gap in the storage market. In doing so, Exceria Plus G4 stands out for the right reasons: namely cost and value, and will do plenty to curry favour with consumers.
Specs
At the heart of Exceria Plus G4 2TB is the same Kioxia 218-layer BiCS8 TLC NAND you’ll find powering one of the fastest SSD on the market, WD_Black SN8100 2TB. Though the SSDs are cut from the same cloth, including their Gen 5 x4 interface and endurance ratings, Kioxia walks a different path than SanDisk.
| Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 | 2TB | 1TB |
|---|---|---|
| NAND | Kioxia 218-layer BiCS8 TLC | Kioxia 218-layer BiCS8 TLC |
| DRAM | No | No |
| Interface | PCIe 5.0 x4 | PCIe 5.0 x4 |
| Seq. Read Speed | 10,000MB/s | 10,000MB/s |
| Seq. Write Speed | 8,200MB/s | 7,900MB/s |
| Random Read Speed | 1,300,000 IOPS | 1,300,000 IOPS |
| Random Write Speed | 1,400,000 IOPS | 1,400,000 IOPS |
| Average power | 5.3W | 5.3W |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 | M.2 2280 |
| Endurance (TBW) | 1,200 | 600 |
| Hardware encryption | Yes | Yes |
| Heatsink version | No | No |
| Warranty | Five years | Five years |
| Price | £159.99 | £92.99 |
The most obvious difference between Exceria Plus G4 2TB and practically every other Gen 5 x4 SSD is speed. The drive’s sequential read speeds clock in at 10,000MB/s while writes run at 8,200MB/s. This is a relatively small leg up from the maximum performance Gen 4 drives can offer, but it’s a boost nonetheless.
What Exceria Plus G4 2TB lacks in speed compared to its peers, the drive makes up for in efficiency. This storage stick only draws 5.3W on average under load, far less than SN8100’s range of 6.2-7.0W. Every watt counts in service of better battery life for laptops and handhelds, making Kioxia’s offering a more appropriate fit for portable devices.
Kioxia doesn’t miss a beat when it comes to endurance, matching market-leaders with a 600TBW per TB of capacity. Of course, you’ll find it difficult to exhaust the drive like this and so it pleases me to see Exceria Plus G4 2TB come with a five-year warranty.
You can purchase Exceria Plus G4 in a 1TB capacity, in addition to the 2TB capacity I’m reviewing. However, there sadly isn’t a 4TB option. Of the models available, I’d opt for the 2TB option for the best value as it’s double the storage of the base SKU while only 72% more expensive.
Performance
I’m calling upon the services of the Club386 7950X3D test bench for my Exceria Plus G4 2TB benchmarks. The drive slots snuggly into the PCIe 5.0 x4 expansion slot on the system’s MSI MEG X670E Ace motherboard, benefitting from a large heatsink and thermal pad.
Our 7950X3D Test PCs
Club386 carefully chooses each component in a test bench to best suit the review at hand. When you view our benchmarks, you’re not just getting an opinion, but the results of rigorous testing carried out using hardware we trust.
Shop Club386 test platform components:
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D
Motherboard: MSI MEG X670E ACE
Cooler: Arctic Liquid Freezer III 420 A-RGB
GPU: Sapphire Nitro+ Radeon RX 7800 XT
Memory: 64GB Kingston Fury Beast DDR5
Storage: 2TB WD_Black SN850X NVMe SSD
PSU: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 13 1,300W
Chassis: Fractal Design Torrent Grey
Kioxia doesn’t offer Exceria Plus G4 2TB with a bespoke heatsink, so you’ll need to provide your own passive cooling to assist with thermal performance. Naturally, the results below will vary slightly depending on the quality of your solution.
CrystalDiskMark
In the face of CrystalDiskMark’s sequential benchmarks, Exceria Plus G4 2TB actually performs better than advertised with sequential read and write speeds slightly north of Kioxia’s claims. Relative to other SSDs, the drive frequently sits in the middle, outperforming Gen 4 but falling behind faster Gen 5 models.
Kioxia clearly isn’t aiming to top charts with Exceria Plus G4 2TB. That goal will fall to the brand’s Exceria Pro G2 drive due to arrive in the future. What this SSD accomplishes, though, is a palatable middle ground between Gen 4 and 5 options.
Iometer
Exceria Plus G4 2TB nips at the heels of Samsung 990 Pro 2TB at lower queue depths. Once the going gets tougher, the Gen 5 drive sneaks ahead. These two SSDs will continue to scrap throughout this review. Meanwhile, SN8100 2TB unsurprisingly tops the board.
PCMark 10
An average latency of 52μs places Exceria Plus G4 2TB closer to 990 Pro 2TB than it does SN8100 2TB. Although, they’re all so speedy that you’d find it difficult to tell the difference between them in most real-world applications.
Average bandwidth mirrors trends established from latency. Exceria Plus G4 2TB enjoys a small lead over 990 Pro 2TB, while SN8100 2TB is in an entirely different class of performance.
Final PCMark 10 scores see Exceria Plus G4 2TB expectedly secure a silver medal. Once again, the competition is closest between Kioxia’s SSD and 990 Pro 2TB, further illustrating that its capabilities as a Gen 5 SSD are greater than Gen 4 but aren’t worlds away.
Gaming
All three SSDs have more room to breathe in 3DMark than they do in PCMark 10, as the application’s gaming benchmarks aren’t as demanding. This sees average bandwidths on the drives fire up to new heights, but does nothing to the established drive hierarchy.
Exceria Plus G4 2TB benefits the most with a speed boost of 9% relative to PCMark 10, but 990 Pro 2TB isn’t far behind with an increase of 8%.
With load times like these, I’d happily run Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail on any of these SSDs. Yes, SN8100 2TB is the fastest of the lot, but it’s only 0.3-0.4s ahead of Exceria Plus G4 2TB and 990 Pro 2TB. You can expect similar results across the board in other games, regardless of whether they support DirectStorage.
Temperature
As much as Exceria Plus G4 2TB runs the hottest of the three SSDs, there’s only a single degree between it and 990 Pro 2TB. Taking into account the Gen 5 drive’s higher performance with no thermal throttling in sight, this peaking operating temperature is easy to stomach.
That said, if you don’t have a heatsink handy then Exceria Plus G4 2TB will run hotter. There’s sadly no heatsink variant available from Kioxia at the time of writing. This isn’t a problem for 990 Pro 2TB or SN8100 2TB which are readily available with built-in cooling.
Conclusion
I hope we see more SSDs like Exceria Plus G4 2TB hit the market in the coming years. Attractive as the fastest PCIe Gen 5 drives are, the space is sorely lacking in value-oriented options. Kioxia’s offering provides a better balance, providing the advantages of its modern interface with a reasonable price.
Costing £92.99 / £159.99, you’re not paying a huge chunk of change more for Exceria Plus G4 than you would 990 Pro (£89.79 / £145.00). That extra £3.20-14.99 nets you an SSD that holds up far better under extended loads, a benefit which professionals working with large datasets will appreciate.
For those with a PCIe 5.0 SSD slot looking to squeeze more out of their system and storage, without breaking the bank, Exceria Plus G4 2TB comes recommended.
