Kioxia Exceria Plus 2TB NVMe SSD Review

The Exceria Plus range of NVMe drives are the fastest of the Kioxia re-branded SSDs. Formally known as the RD500 under Toshiba branding, the range now includes a 2TB flagship drive, a capacity that was previously not available in the line-up. The Exceria Plus uses a combination of an 8-channel controller and BiCS4, 96-Layer 3D TLC NAND and is available in 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities.

Performance-wise, Kioxia quotes Sequential figures for the 2TB version of the Exceria Plus as up to 3,400MB/s for reads and up to 3,200MB/s for writes. Incidentally, that read figure is the same for all three versions of the drive. The 1TB model is rated as up to 2,000MB/s for writes with the 500GB version slightly faster at 2,500MB/s.

We couldn't quite hit those maximum figures for the 2TB drive under the ATTO benchmark, with the review drive producing figures of 3,200MB/s for reads and 3,010MB/s for writes. However, with our own Sequential tests, we could confirm the official maximum read/write figures with a read result of 3,488MB/s and a write result of 3,203MB/s.

The random performance of the 2TB model is quoted at up to an impressive 680,000 IOPS and up to 620,000 IOPS for read and writes respectively. These figures are from testing the drive at a QD of 32 using 8 threads. Our standard 4K testing is done with four threads so our results are some way off the official figures. The best read score we saw from our testing was 329,570 IOPs for reads and 261,419 IOPS for writes. We did do some quick testing at a QD of 32 and with 8 threads with the best read result of 517,506 IOPS with writes at 468,633 IOPS.

The SSD Utility management software has also had a bit of a revamp. It has all the tools you need to maintain the drive as it displays lifespan, capacity usage, temperature as well as supporting firmware updates. There’s even a built-in benchmarking tool to run to see how the drive is performing.

We found the 2TB Kioxia Exceria Plus on Span.com for £405.60 (inc VAT) HERE.

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Pros

• Overall performance.
• 5-year warranty.

Cons

• Couldn't reach the official maximum 4K figures under testing.
• A bit pricey.

KitGuru says: The Kioxia Exceria Plus uses 96-layer NAND technology which helps give it good overall performance and it also comes with a 5-year warranty. It could do with a slight tweak to the pricing, however, to make it more competitive in its market segment.

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