Gen 5 SSDs are infamously power-hungry, difficult to effectively cool, and far more expensive than their Gen 4 counterparts but launches like Kioxia’s Exceria Plus G4 hope to change that. While this drive doesn’t reach the limits of its interface, it’s a more balanced design that aims to deliver 10GB/s of bandwidth at an affordable price and with lower chances of thermal throttling.
Contrary to what its name suggests, Exceria Plus G4 in’t a Gen 4 SSD. Instead, it features a Gen 5 x4 interface alongside a Phison PS5031-E31T controller and the brand’s 218-layer BiCS Flash TLC NAND. Putting all this hardware to work, the 2TB drive’s sequential read and write speeds respectively reach up to 10,000MB/s and 8,200MB/s.
On that note, Kioxia only plans to release Exceria Plus G4 in 1TB and 2TB capacities, both lacking any kind of DRAM caching. While drives packing their own cache tend to perform better, at these high speeds most users won’t even notice the difference. Be it installing apps or updates, launching and loading games, or watching and recording videos, the SSD should perform well.
Exceria Plus G4 seems a good fit for desktop systems and mobile devices alike, thanks to its focus on efficiency. Kioxia claims its new SSD only sips 5.3W under load, an 80% improvement in efficiency gen-on-gen, whereas other Gen 5 drives can guzzle up to 19W. Every watt matters on battery-powered devices like laptops and handheld gaming PCs, making this a major positive.
Lower power consumption also translates into lower operating temperatures, removing the need for excessively large heatsinks or active cooling solutions. In fact, Exceria suggests the product labels on Plus G4 alone will be enough to dissipate any heat incurred during use.
For the remaining specs, the brand advertises 600TBW and 1,200TBW endurance on the 1TB and 2TB models respectively, alongside 1,300,000 read IOPS and 1,400,000 write IOPS for both versions. Not ground-breaking, yet perfectly fine for what seems to be an affordable series.
While the brand has yet to share pricing, we expect the Exceria Plus G4 to retail around £160 for a 2TB model, based on pricing of faster, competing drives, complemented by a five-year warranty. Given its predecessor, Plus G3, ranks among the most affordable SSDs (£98 for 2TB) on the market I expect to see this trend continue.
