INTRODUCTION

    If one was to ask any SSD manufacturer about which generation of PCIe NVMe M.2 SSDs they are selling more currently that would be PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 ones, at least for the majority of cases. As a matter of fact, last year SSDs outsold HDDs (in units, not total capacity) and even though I do believe SSDs will never fully replace HDDs (probably not in my lifetime anyways) this is a good indicator of where the market is heading. KIOXIA hasn't released that many consumer oriented M.2 SSDs lately, especially Gen 4 ones (still no Gen 5) but since they did release the EXCERIA PLUS G3 line a while back today I'll be testing the 2TB variant.

    KIOXIA Europe GmbH (formerly Toshiba Memory Europe GmbH) is the European based subsidiary of KIOXIA Corporation, a leading worldwide supplier of flash memory and solid state drives (SSDs). From the invention of flash memory to today's breakthrough BiCS FLASH 3D technology, KIOXIA continues to pioneer cutting-edge memory solutions and services that enrich people's lives and expand society's horizons. The company's innovative 3D flash memory technology, BiCS FLASH, is shaping the future of storage in high-density applications, including advanced smartphones, PCs, SSDs, automotive and data centers.

    The EXCERIA PLUS G3 is a DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSD line which currently includes 1/2TB capacities and is based on the PS5021-E21 4-channel (ARM Cortex-R5 single processor) NVMe v1.4 controller by PHISON and KIOXIA's very own 112-layer BiCS 3D TLC NAND flash. Once again the PS5021-E21 NAND flash controller by PHISON features their 4th Gen LDPC engine (low-density parity check) along with end-to-end data path protection, Host Memory Buffer (HMB) architecture support (uses a fraction of your PC's system memory to cache mapping tables), wear levelling, low power mode, thermal throttling (70 degrees Celsius limit), TRIM, bad block management, static/dynamic range SLC cache and SmartECC 2.0 (RAID ECC) and fully supports AES-256bit hardware encryption along with TCG Opal 2.0 and Pyrite. KIOXIA covers the EXCERIA PLUS G3 line with a 5-year limited warranty and reports an MTTF (mean time to failure) of 1.5 million hours and an TBW of 600 and 1200 for the 1TB and 2TB variants respectively. So, time to see how the new EXCERIA PLUS G3 2TB does against both past KIOXIA drives and its direct competition.