Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

Everything about the Kioxia Exceria 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD screams Toshiba RC500, and not surprisingly, looking up that model, it makes use of the same controller. That said, the Kioxia Exceria however has more refined firmware and all-new 96-layer TLC NAND. The SSD leaves a very sturdy impression TBH, especially for the value SKU series (the Plus series is even faster). You also need to realize that 90% of the add-in M.2 SSDs out there from other brands, all use Kioxia NAND often paired with a Phison controller. The Kioxia Exceria has been going back and forth towards the OCZ roots, oh how time has changed and shaped this industry eh? That said, I was surprised to see what TLC performance we retrieved, as really there are peaks high to double that of advertised on reading performance. Write performance sits at a very comfortable ~1500 MB/sec, and the combination of some provisioning (pseudo-SLC buffer (pSLC)) and DRAM caching makes sure that you will not hit the infamous TLC/QLC write whole anytime fast. We measure that to be around the 40 GB marker, so you need to write 40GB of data continuously before perf drops, but even then the SSD manages to keep a sustained linear write of 600~700 MB/sec easily. The read performance is fine and in some workloads ever terrific.   

Out of the dozens of value SSDs we have tested, this one makes the top 5 (until you run out of write buffers). This SSD will write as fast as it can through a cache, once that cache runs dry you drop in write performance. Before you run into that 'issue' you need to realize the complexity of workload. We have written 40GB continuously at max speed before the SSD dropped. Also please do realize that the performance in writes differs per volume size you purchase, a 250 and 500GB model would write a notch slower. So we are strictly compressing this conclusion towards the 1TB model. So the question, do you write large files often over 40GB? That answer is likely no. In that case, this SSD is going to kick butt in terms of value for money. TBW values are okay, 400 TBW for the 1 TB model. Albeit how companies calculate or test these values these days, is a bit of a mystery. 

• 250 GB, TBW=100
• 500GB TBW=200
• 1TB , TBW=400

Concluding

The Kioxia Exceria 1TB is a pretty interesting offering in many ways. Warranty, performance and pricing seem to be spot on and IOPS numbers are good as well, plenty enough for even an enthusiast PC. The TBW value of 400TB written feels a little shy compared to others, but the truth is also that no company these days explains how they get to that number anyway. Toshiba is guaranteeing 400TB written combined with 5 years warranty, whichever one comes first. If you write 50GB (which is a fascinating large amount of data ) each and every day of the year you are looking at nearly 22 years of writes before you pass that TBW value. I don't know about you, but I do not write 50GB per day every day, all year, not even a 4th of that. It's a TLC based M.2 SSD that ticks most right that is fast enough. The one 'problem' is the aforementioned TLC write hole which we measured once you pass that 40GB region of continuous writing. That's a value that requires really significant continuous and constant 100% stressed write workloads, and for a DIY or game PC it's a value that likely isn't relevant. Once the write hole does kick in, you're still hovering at very decent but closer to SATA3 like write performance. At a price hovering at 15 cents per GB for the 1000GB model, the Exceria has priced a notch too high. There are plenty similarly performing products out there hovering at a 12 cents per GB offering. Also, I feel a 2TB version should have been made available as NAND capacity and storage demand rises. As an SSD there's little to complain, not super fast in the NVme SSD segment, but definitely good and covered with 5-years warrant or that 400TBW value reached, whichever one comes first of course.

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