Kioxia Exceria 960GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Kioxia Exceria SSD 960GB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER - 4K testing8. Throughput9. PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark10. Performance Stability11. Real Life File Testing12. Closing Thoughts13. View All Pages

The rebranding of Toshiba Memory to Kioxia has seen a number of product lines assume different identities. So when it comes to SSDs, the RC500 series becomes the Exceria NVMe, the RD500 is now the Exceria Plus line, and more pertinent to this review, the TR200 series becomes the Exceria SATA range, a family that consists of just three capacities; 240GB, 480GB and the flagship 960GB model.

The Exceria SATA drive does come with a later firmware version than the 960GB TR200 we tested a while back, but the biggest surprise came when we opened the drive as we fully expected to see the same layout as the TR200. But instead of the eight NAND packages that equipped the 960GB TR200, we found just four denser NAND packages on the drives PCB.

Kioxia quotes sequential performance figures for the 960GB drive as up to 555MB/s and 540MB/s for read and writes respectively. Using the ATTO benchmark we confirmed those figures with a read score of 564MB/s, a bit better than the official figure, while the writes were bang on the money at 544MB/s.

The random 4K IOPS test performance results are a bit of a mixed bag however. When it comes to 4K random reads, the drive produced a score of 81,661 IOPS, confirming the official figure of 81,000 IOPS. Writes, on the other hand, fell way short of the official 88,000 IOPS at 65,831 IOPS.

Additionally, Kioxia's SSD Utility management software has all the tools you need to maintain the drive and keep it updated. With it, users can update the firmware and set the over-provisioning level, in addition to keeping an eye on the drive’s lifespan, capacity usage and temperature.

Kioxia has told us the 960GB model should be priced at £89.99, and we found it Ebuyer for £94.98 HERE.

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Pros

• Overall performance.
• Decent value.

Cons

• Write performance is disappointing in some of our tests.
• 3 year warranty is a bit mean.

KitGuru says: Kioxia have rebranded the TR200 drive as the Exceria SATA and have it sitting under the Upgrader product banner, aimed at those looking for an affordable first upgrade from a standard hard disk.

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