The Exceria Pro G2 is KIOXIA's first retail PCIe 5.0 SSD, and it lands as one of the more well-rounded Gen5 drives on the market — fast, efficient, and reasonably priced for what it offers. If you've been waiting for KIOXIA to bring its in-house NAND expertise to a consumer flagship instead of just supplying flash to everyone else's drives, this is that moment.

• SPEED AHEAD WITH PCIe 5.0: Experience ultra-fast performance with PCIe 5.0 and NVMe 2.0d – the EXCERIA PRO G2 SSD series offers read speeds up to 14,900 MB/s and write speeds up to 13,700 MB/s, complementing fast RAM setups with high-speed data access.
• ENERGY EFFICIENT PERFORMANCE: Designed with a focus on low power consumption and minimal heat generation, these internal solid state drives operate without excessive power or cooling requirements—ideal for laptops and high-performance desktop PCs such as gaming or creator builds.
• BEAT THE HEAT: EXCERIA PRO G2 SSDs feature innovative product labels that improve heat dissipation and contribute to stable performance and enormous bandwidth during demanding games, intense and parallel workflows, AI generation and CG production.
• BICS FLASH – MADE IN JAPAN: Equipped with KIOXIA's innovative BiCS FLASH 3D Flash Memory, the drive enables high-density storage and ultra-fast data access – for smooth gaming and smooth playback and editing of ultra-high-resolution 4K videos and RAW images.
• EASY MANAGEMENT WITH SSD UTILITY: Monitor, maintain and optimize your KIOXIA drive with SSD utility management software! Maximize the performance of your drive and check the remaining life in percent using the status indicator.

Specs at a Glance (2TB Model)

The drive is a drop-in upgrade for existing laptops and desktops alike, making it a straightforward way to extend a machine's usable life rather than replacing it outright.

The Exceria Pro G2 is positioned as KIOXIA's premium, enthusiast-tier drive — the only model in the current consumer range with embedded DRAM. The step-down PCIe 5.0 models (Exceria Plus G4, Exceria G3) rely on Host Memory Buffer instead of onboard DRAM and top out around 10,000 MB/s, while the PCIe 4.0 line (Exceria Plus G3, Exceria Basic) and the SATA-based Exceria SATA sit further below that. Endurance and warranty terms are shared across most of the range at 600TB/1TB and 1,200TB/2TB with a 5-year warranty, with the SATA model alone getting a shorter 3-year term.

Inside the retail box there isn't much to find beyond the drive itself and a quick printed guide — KIOXIA keeps the packaging minimal.

The SSD ships inside a small carton with an antistatic bag to protect it during shipping.

The KIOXIA product has all the typical dimensions for an M2 2280 NVME drive. It's a no-frills single-sided M.2 stick: NAND, DRAM, and controller on one side of the PCB, no built-in heatsink, no RGB, nothing flashy. That's a deliberate choice — single-sided construction keeps it compatible with laptops and ultrabooks that have shallow M.2 slots, and it plays nicely with the PS5's expansion slot as well, assuming your firmware and slot support Gen5 speeds (note the PS5 itself currently caps out at Gen4 speeds even with a Gen5 drive installed).

The used Silicon Motion SM2508 controller is a noticeably more mature Gen5 solution than the first wave of Phison E26-based drives (like the Corsair MP700 Pro), which tended to run hot and needed aggressive cooling to avoid throttling. The SM2508 is more power-efficient by design, which matters a lot on a drive that ships with no heatsink at all. The 2TB model has 2GB of onboard LPDDR4X-4266 DRAM cache (KIOXIA scales it at roughly 1GB per TB of capacity, so the 1TB gets 1GB, the 4TB gets 4GB). It's not a DRAM-less design, which is part of why it holds up well on random I/O and sustained workloads rather than just looking good in short sequential burst tests.

while at the back, you will find all the needed information as serial number and firmware revision. The product supports up to 1,200TBW on the 2TB model is solid, middle-of-the-pack endurance for a drive in this performance class, backed by a standard 5-year warranty. It won't be the deciding factor for most buyers, but it puts KIOXIA in line with competitors rather than behind them.

- Installation

Not much to be said here, just get the drive and plug it into an empty NVMe slot. In some boards you have to change Bios settings to Storage: PCIe to get the drive recognized. KIOXIA offers its own software to control the NVME and upgrade firmware

Here is more information about the drive, it runs at PCIe Gen5 and supports NVME Express 2.0 protocol.

After formatted you can expect up to 1,86TB of useable free space.