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Kioxia Exceria Pro G2 2TB SSD Review — Speed built to last
The Kioxia Exceria Pro G2 delivers high-end PCIe 5.0 performance, low 4K random read latency, and good power efficiency on proven hardware. It isn’t the fastest drive in its class, but it’s a reliable alternative.
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We always like to review Kioxia drives because they usually provide the perfect marriage of performance and reliability. We certainly wish they were more readily available in retail in the U.S., but we can still appreciate a good design when we see it. The Exceria Pro G2 continues in that lineage with all-new levels of performance you can only get with the newest hardware and a PCIe 5.0 interface. It’s like a Kingston Fury Renegade G5 made for OEMs, providing most of the performance you expect from this class of drive with reliability-minded firmware built in.
The important bit is that this drive still delivers what you’d expect. That means high performance, including sustained write performance, good power efficiency, and very low random read latency. These are the hallmarks of a drive that offers an excellent user experience. This is a very fast drive, just not the very fastest, but we make the argument that this is a deliberate trade-off for a drive with roots in an area where reliability is a bigger priority. For some, that might otherwise tip things in its favor. Regardless of your stance, though, its price in areas where it is available is competitive, and we can judge it by that.
The Kioxia Exceria Pro G2 is available in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. These are the most popular capacities, with 8TB yet again out of reach due to rising prices. The drive can reach up to 14,900 / 13,700 MB/s and 2,300K / 1,950K random read and write IOPS at the highest capacity. Most of this performance is achievable at 2TB, which is likely the sweet spot.
The drive has the usual five-year warranty with up to 600TB written per terabyte. Encryption support is not explicitly mentioned, and for a model in this line, we would expect TCG Pyrite and software encryption support only.
For pricing, we are making estimates based on pre-tax listings in the EU. Kioxia does not officially distribute the drive at U.S. retail, and the Amazon.com listings you find may be imports. These come in at ~$190, ~$340, and ~$650. These estimates make it look downright affordable, with the 1TB and 2TB models well under the WD Black SN8100, and the 4TB is roughly at parity at the time of review. It would be more expensive to import the drive, of course. One reason Kioxia can keep the price of the drive down is that it manufactures the flash it’s using, and its competition there – Crucial dropped out of the market, for one – is reduced.
Kioxia supports its SSDs with SSD Utility Management Software, or SSD Utility for short. This SSD toolbox includes a summary of the drive and system, a firmware update feature, drive health monitoring, a secure erase function, password protection, and a section for troubleshooting. For data backup, we recommend MultiDrive for Windows – there is a portable version available, as well as a bootable WinPE image – or Clonezilla for other operating systems.
This is a single-sided drive in the M.2 2280 form factor. Specifically, the 1TB and 2TB conform to 2280-S3-M, while the 4TB is 2280-S4-M. These are all single-sided, but the 4TB is slightly thicker at 2.63mm versus 2.38mm. This is because it needs 16-die, rather than 8-die, NAND flash packages to achieve 2TB per package. The resulting extra height should not be an issue in most cases but is worth noting for devices with specific limitations.
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