Skip to main content
PC Gamer THE GLOBAL AUTHORITY ON PC GAMES
Search PC Gamer
View Profile
Movies & TV
Gaming Industry
PC Gaming Show
Newsletter Signup
Community Guidelines
Affiliate Links
Meet the team
About PC Gamer
PC Gamer Magazine Subscription
Why subscribe?
Subscribe to the world’s #1 PC gaming mag
Try a single issue or save on a subscription
Issues delivered straight to your door or device
From£35.99View
Essential Hardware
PC Gaming Show
Dune: Awakening
Recommended reading
Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 2 TB review
Crucial P510 NVMe SSD review
Crucial T705 1 TB review
WD Black SN7100 1 TB review
SK Hynix Platinum P51 NVMe SSD review
Crucial P310 1 TB (2280) review
WD Black SN8100 2 TB NVMe SSD review
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 NVMe SSD review
From flash maker to drive creator, the price just ain’t right on this one.
Zak Storey
25 June 2025
(Image: © Future)
Our Verdict
Kioxia’s Exceria Plus G4 delivers some solid throughput and is impressively efficient enough, but it’s just a little too late to market. Combine that with the fact it’s slightly more expensive than it should be, and it has no real edge over its competition using incredibly similar hardware, and it makes it a difficult thing to get excited about.
Highly efficient
Super low temperatures
Solid all-round performance
Random 4K performance lags behind others
Price slightly too high
PC Gamer’s got your back
Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.
No price informationCheck Amazon
We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
The Phison E31T drives are finally here and arriving by the dozen. Here, I have Kioxia’s Exceria Plus G4, and it is quite the curious thing. Powered with a mix of both Kioxia flash and Phison controller tech, it’s aimed squarely at those looking for an entry-level PCIe 5.0 drive. One that doesn’t break the bank and yet still delivers. This isn’t a top-tier WD Black SN8100 or similar; instead, it’s all about efficiency, about reducing the need for heatsinks, and for wider compatibility with laptops, consoles, and other devices that just don’t have the luxury of high airflow, like us humble PC gamers have.
Kioxia as a brand, although relatively fresh, is not new on the scene. It’s got quite the history; once being a division inside of Toshiba, it was spun off as its own entity in 2018 before rebranding to Kioxia the following year. By that point Toshiba had already absorbed the now defunct OCZ, and the newly hatched Kioxia had picked up Lite-On as well in its upward ascent.
Traditionally, though, Kioxia’s always been seen more as a NAND manufacturer in a B2B capacity than as a direct drive developer for us humble consumers. It’s worked quite closely over the years with the likes of Western Digital and SanDisk to deliver some truly exceptional flash memory to its PCIe drives, and Corsair has dabbled with it from time to time as well.
When its PR team reached out with a sample of the brand-new Exceria Plus G4 drive, well, it was too tempting to pass up. Surely, I thought, if anyone could make a compelling SSD, build something to topple the titans that sit atop our best SSD list, these were the good folk to do it.
Kioxia Exceria Plus G4 specs:
(Image credit: Future)
Capacity: 2 TB
Interface: PCIe 5.0 x4
Memory controller: Phison E31T
Flash memory: Kioxia 218-Layer BiCS8 TLC NAND
Rated performance: 10,000 MB/s sustained read, 8,200 MB/s sustained write
Endurance: 1,200 TBW
Warranty: Five years
Price: $225 | £180
It’s the beating heart of this thing that’s the most curious addition here. Phison’s E31T controller. It’s not the first time I’ve tested it, as we saw it inside of Corsair’s MP700 Elite as well. It’s effectively based off the design of the Phison E26 controller, but with some major changes to bring that efficiency way up. Phison’s shifted the manufacturing process over to TSMC’s 7 nm lithography, got rid of all of the DRAM cache support, and split total max bandwidth in half as well.
Now, theoretically, that does quite dramatically impact sequential speeds, but to be clear, that is a very small part of what makes a good SSD these days (and honestly, it’s more marketing hype than anything else past a certain point, for gaming at least).
As for the NAND, as you can imagine, Kioxia is using its own here, in the form of a 218-layer BiCS8 TLC. It’s not quite as dense as some of the 276-layer stuff we’ve seen come out of the more premium flagship PCIe 5.0 drives, like Crucial’s T705, but it does seem to be the de facto smart choice for the E31T. In fact, it’s identical to Corsair’s MP700 Elite as well. The only drive that I’ve seen so far that doesn’t use it is Crucial’s P510, which is using (its own) Micron 276-layer TLC instead.
Image 1 of 4
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
(Image credit: Future)
Other top-line stats remain fairly consistent here too. You still get the same M.2 2280 form factor, the same 5-year warranty, that typical 1,200 TBW endurance rating, and that’s about it. Oh, and there’s no heatsink option either; Kioxia’s done away with that entirely. As for pricing, you can pick one of these up for around $225 in the US or £180 in the UK.
Performance, then, is quite predictable on this one. Sequentials fall in the comfortable range of 10.2 GB/s on the read and 8.6 GB/s on the write; it’s ever so slightly faster than the MP700 Elite, although it does chug a little in contrast to Crucial’s P510 (even in its 1 TB configuration). Random 4K performance, however, does feel a little lackluster. Whatever Corsair’s doing on the firmware side is paying dividends, as the Kioxia just cannot match it on random 4K writes with 318 MB/s to 336 MB/s. Similarly, its read speed is markedly lower as well.
3DMark does tell a different story, however, with the G4 seeing a serious uptick in contrast to the MP700 Elite, a combination of improved SSD bandwidth and reduced latency in those tests. Interestingly, it’s faster in Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers as well, with a respectable load time of 7.331 seconds across all scenes.
✅ It’s on offer and you need a cool PCIe 5.0 drive: The Exceria Plus G4 delivers some solid sequential and random 4K numbers throughout, making it ideal for most workloads. If you’re after a cool, quick 5.0 drive with wide compatibility, this is the one.
Don’t buy if…
❌ It’s not on offer and you need something a bit ‘more’: Given how similar its core hardware is to some of its competition and how close the performance is, you’ll be better off just grabbing the cheapest drive.
Temperatures, similar to the Corsair, are just outstanding for a 5.0 drive. Max temp under IOMeter’s seriously intense load topped out at just 60 °C. Not quite the 55 °C that the MP700 Elite managed, but seriously close, and there is a 2-degree difference in ambient temperature to consider there as well.
The only issue I have with it is the price. In fact, as Corsair has had more time in the marketplace, it’s had time to adjust that pricing quite significantly; you can currently pick up the MP700 for as low as $180. In contrast, the Exceria Plus comes in nearly $45 higher for a non-heatsinked drive. That’s an issue, as it seriously ramps up the cost per GB in the US. Impressively, its UK price is lower, but, given how tight the performance is between these two and how similar the hardware is, you’d be best to pick the one that’s on offer in your region.
Perhaps it’s because Corsair’s MP700 Elite has been out for so long already or that we’ve seen E31T drives land in abundance recently. Or perhaps it’s because epic drives like the SN8100 have just ripped up the score sheet on what makes a good SSD a good SSD. But right now, the Kioxia Exceria just doesn’t feel like it’s enough. Even though it’s utilizing its own flash, it’s not delivering anything more than its competitors with that controller, and given that price increase on top of that and the sluggish arrival of it to market, it makes it hard for me to really get excited about it. Is it a good drive? Yeah, sure, it’ll do the job; you won’t be disappointed, that’s a fact, but that’s it.
Kioxia Exceria Plus G4: Price Comparison
No price informationCheck Amazon
We check over 250 million products every day for the best prices
powered by
The Verdict
Read our review policy
Kioxia Exceria Plus G4
Kioxia’s Exceria Plus G4 delivers some solid throughput and is impressively efficient enough, but it’s just a little too late to market. Combine that with the fact it’s slightly more expensive than it should be, and it has no real edge over its competition using incredibly similar hardware, and it makes it a difficult thing to get excited about.
After graduating from the University of Derby in 2014, Zak joined the PC Format and Maximum PC team as its resident staff writer. Specializing in PC building, and all forms of hardware and componentry, he soon worked his way up to editor-in-chief, leading the publication through the covid dark times. Since then, he’s dabbled in PR, working for Corsair for a while as its UK PR specialist, before returning to the fold as a tech journalist once again.
He now operates as a freelance tech editor, writing for all manner of publications, including PC Gamer, Maximum PC, Techradar, Gamesradar, PCGamesN, and Trusted Reviews as well. If there’s something happening in the tech industry it’s highly likely Zak has a strong opinion on it.
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 2 TB review
Crucial P510 NVMe SSD review
Crucial T705 1 TB review
WD Black SN7100 1 TB review
SK Hynix Platinum P51 NVMe SSD review
Crucial P310 1 TB (2280) review
Latest in SSDs
SK Hynix Platinum P51 NVMe SSD review
Crucial P510 NVMe SSD review
Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 2 TB review
SanDisk Extreme Pro 2 TB external SSD review
TeamGroup’s new portable SSD features a physical kill-switch for spies and definitely not for people who can’t stop fiddling with buttons
Phison launches the first ever SSD controller to have built-in AI processing, along with some monstrous random data performance figures
Latest in Reviews
SK Hynix Platinum P51 NVMe SSD review
Crucial P510 NVMe SSD review
Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 2 TB review
Dune: Awakening review: Spicy survival with an uneven endgame
Rematch review: A bar-setting football game
Razer Blade 14 (2025) gaming laptop review
HARDWARE BUYING GUIDES
LATEST GAME REVIEWS
Best Steam Deck accessories in Australia for 2025: Our favorite docks, powerbanks and gamepads
Best graphics card for laptops in 2025: the mobile GPUs I’d want in my next gaming laptop
Best mini PCs in 2025: The compact computers I love the most
Best 14-inch gaming laptop in 2025: The top compact gaming laptops I’ve held in these hands
Best Mini-ITX motherboards in 2025: My pick from all the mini mobo marvels I’ve tested
Biwin Black Opal X570 Pro 2 TB review
Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 (2025) review
Razer Blade 14 (2025) review
Dune: Awakening review
Rematch review
PC Gamer is part of Future plc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site.
Contact Future’s experts
Terms and conditions
Privacy policy
Cookies policy
Advertise with us
Accessibility Statement
Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury,
BA1 1UA. All rights reserved. England and Wales company registration number 2008885.
Please login or signup to comment
Please wait…