Kioxia Exceria Pro 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD Review - Introduction

Kioxia Exceria Pro 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD (PCIe Gen 4.0)
Breaching 7 GB/sec M.2.Class SSD performance for a mainstream price

We review the Kioxia Exceria Pro 2 TB M.2 NVMe SSD, yes the artist previously known as Toshiba is back with very fast NAND and PCIe Gen 4.0 controller, this unit offers durability as well as PCIe 4.0 performance levels above 7 GB/sec. This product is tagged under SKU code LSE10Z002TG8 should you want to seek it.

The NAND flash chips used are their own Kioxia's latest 112-layer 3D (BiCS5) TLC technology. The new flash chips have marginally increased overall performance and much faster write rates. The tested product today is available for $279 USD/EUR for the 2TB model.  For that 2 TB model, that equates to a very competitive 14 cents per GB. Keep in mind that this is a TLC-written NVMe SSD outfitted with a controller that actually is a rebranded PhisonE18 controller, capable of some reaping benefits inside your storage array. PCIe Gen 4.0 for those that want top-notch high-performance at a fair price, this PCIe Gen 4 x4 M2 unit might be what you are after. The Exceria Pro is available in multiple volumes and sizes. There's the 2TB version we test and a 1 TB model. Kioxia is pleading numbers that run into the 7000 MB/s, Write Speeds, and up to 6400 MB/s for the fastest 2 TB M2 SSD. They a offer proper 5 years warranty. The TBW (TeraBytes Written—the total amount of data that a company is willing to guarantee can be written to the drive) rated 800 TBW for the 2 TB model and 400 TBW for the 1 TB model. The IOPS values are staggering as well, roughly 1 Million each way.

The specs are outstanding but will this unit deliver what it claims? SSD is based on the trendy 8-channel Phison's PS5018-E18 controller and, of course, has been fitted with TLC written NAND. The performance will vary slightly depending on volume size; the more significant, the faster, though. The SSD is a Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe 1.4) M.2 2280 form factor SSD. The performance numbers of a proper SATA3 SSD offers these days are simply excellent, but with the more niche NVMe SSDs you can multiply performance 14x, and that offers serious numbers. The unit follows a smaller M.2 2280 form factor (8cm), so it will fit on most ATX motherboards capable of M.2 just fine. Anyway, wanna see how fast it really is? Will this be a proper Samsung 980 PRO competitor (heck yes). Next page and onwards into the review then.