An external SSD is something essential. KIOXIA is one of the largest manufacturers in the area of SSDs and flash memory.
With the KIOXIA Exceria Plus, they offer a high-quality external SSD that scores with high speed and reliability. Unfortunately, the latter in particular is no longer a given for many manufacturers.
Let’s take a look at how good or maybe bad the KIOXIA Exceria Plus external SSD is in the test!
At this point, many thanks to KIOXIA who provided me with the SSD for this test.
The KIOXIA Exceria Plus 1TB in the test
The KIOXIA Exceria Plus has a medium-sized and simple housing. This measures 105 x 45 x 14 mm and is made entirely of metal.
The latter makes the case appear very “solid” and stable. Compared to the many “mini” external SSDs, the Exceria Plus is not overly compact, quite the opposite.
The design is super simple. We have a gray metal housing with KIOXIA lettering.
There is no rubber coating or anything like that. However, due to the solid casing, it is still quite well protected against falls. In general, SSDs are less critical here. The SSD should also meet the “MIL-STD-810H” standard.
Apart from that, there isn’t much exciting to report. The SSD has a USB C port, as well as a blue status LED on the side.
M.2 2280 SSD inside
I think, given the form factor, it is an open secret that KIOXIA simply installed a “normal” 2280 NVME SSD inside the case for the Exceria Plus.
Thanks to the screws on the bottom, the external SSD can also be opened easily.
Inside we find a KIOXIA KWG10ZNV1T00.
This appears to be the normal KIOXIA EXCERIA SSD. A solid entry-level SSD with TLC NAND.
Advantages and disadvantages of this structure
More and more manufacturers are now relying on a completely “integrated” design for external SSDs. This means that the memory components are soldered directly onto a board with the SSD controller, the USB controller, etc.
KIOXIA, on the other hand, uses a “normal” internal SSD around which an external case is simply built. What are the advantages and disadvantages of this design?
Advantages:
If the housing, the USB C port, or the USB controller is defective, the SSD can simply be removed and installed in another housing or directly in the PC. You can swap the SSD and the case if you wanted. SSDs originally intended for internal use are often built to higher standards in terms of durability and reliability. It is much easier for KIOXIA to develop such an SSD.
Disadvantages:
Increased space requirements. Costs can be higher compared to “closer” external SSDs. Performance can be slightly worse.
Smart values can be read out
You can read current status data from the SSD using programs such as CrystalDiskInfo.
Data rates of the KIOXIA Exceria Plus external SSD
KIOXIA advertises the KIOXIA Exceria Plus with 1050 MB/s reading and 1000 MB/s writing. Good values, which also tell us that we have an SSD with a USB C 3.2 Gen 2 10 Gbit connection.
Frankly, this is now a good standard. But what about the performance in practice? Can this really achieve the manufacturer’s specifications?
The SSD reached 1031 MB/s reading and 1082 MB/s writing. This means that the manufacturer’s specifications are slightly undercut when reading and exceeded when writing.
Even compared to other SSDs, the KIOXIA Exceria Plus doesn’t look bad. Excitingly, when you read it, it falls behind some of the “big” models. However, the differences here are minimal (1089 MB/s to 1031 MB/s).
In terms of writing, this is the fastest SSD I’ve ever had in my hands.
Constant performance? SLC cache?
Unfortunately, many SSDs do not have a constant write rate. They usually use a write cache. This means that part of the SSD can be written to more quickly than the rest of the SSD. This is particularly pronounced with QLC SSDs. After the cache, these often barely reach 100 MB/s.
How does the KIOXIA Exceria Plus 1TB perform here? The KIOXIA Exceria Plus also has a write cache!
We can see that a practical data rate of around 800 MB/s is only briefly maintained with H2TestW. After that, it drops to around 500 MB/s before becoming a little unstable towards the end of the write process (which is not unusual, however).
So we have a constant write rate of around 500 MB/s with the KIOXIA Exceria Plus. But this is not a bad result!
So we can see that the KIOXIA Exceria Plus sits in the middle, between the “high-end” models and the SSDs that use QLC NAND and are therefore extremely slow.
PC Mark
Although PC Mark is an artificial benchmark, it was designed to mimic authentic usage scenarios.
We carry out two tests: the “Data Drive” test, which focuses primarily on data drives and mainly includes copy tests, and the “Full” test.
The “Full” test is actually intended for internal drives, but still proves to be interesting.
Exciting! In the data drive test, the KIOXIA Exceria Plus 1TB achieved top results with a score of 1370.
We also achieved a good 771 points in the big “full” test, but these are only enough for midfield.
3D Mark
Let’s also take a look at the 3D Mark SSD test. Although this was originally designed for internal SSDs, it still offers informative values regarding response times and loading performance of external SSDs.
The 3D Mark SSD test checks:
Loading Battlefield™ V from launch to the main menu.
Loading Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
Loading Overwatch® from launch to the main menu.
Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch®.
Installing The Outer Worlds® from the Epic Games Launcher.
Saving game progress in The Outer Worlds®.
Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike®: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.
Here too we see a strong performance from the SSD, which is clearly in the top 3.
Practical tests
Of course, we also need to do some practical testing. Here I copy 3 data packages to and from the SSD.
Test 1 – 1x file with 49 GB Test 2 – 1x file with 215 GB Test 3 – 378x files with a total size of 49 GB (game installation)
The KIOXIA Exceria Plus 1TB shows a solid performance here, but it doesn’t stand out compared to the competition. This is not bad but nothing “special” either.
When writing, the KIOXIA Exceria Plus was somewhat hindered by the comparatively small SLC cache.
The Exceria Plus does have a much higher data rate after the cache than, for example, the Crucial X9, but the latter has a larger cache, which is why this is less noticeable.
Conclusion
The KIOXIA Exceria Plus 1TB is a good external SSD! But this falls somewhat into the category of unremarkably good.
This is rarely the fastest, but never the slowest choice either. Thanks to the TLC memory, the SSD offers fairly stable, consistent write performance. Yes, here too the write performance drops to around 500 MB/s under constant load, but this is significantly better than many other cheap external SSDs.
Apart from that, the KIOXIA Exceria Plus 1TB also cut a very good figure in the test!
If you get this at a fair price, it is well suited for all areas, whether it is about moving large amounts of data or for backup purposes.