KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD Review: The Mid-Range Speedster Put to the Test

I still remember the feeling vividly. It was a project deadline, a complex video render that my PC, which I had painstakingly built just a few years prior, was struggling to handle. The timeline stuttered, the preview window lagged, and the final export time was climbing into the hours. Every click was met with the spinning wheel of doom. It wasn’t the CPU or the RAM holding me back; it was the bottleneck I had overlooked: the storage. My trusty old hard drive, once a cavern of space, had become a ball and chain, shackling the performance of every other component. This digital quicksand is a frustration every PC user, gamer, and creative professional knows all too well—long loading screens, agonizingly slow file transfers, and a general system sluggishness that makes you want to throw your machine out the window. An upgrade isn’t just a luxury; it’s a necessity for reclaiming your time and sanity.

What to Consider Before Buying an NVMe SSD

A Solid State Drive, specifically an NVMe M.2 drive, is more than just an item; it’s a key solution for unlocking your computer’s true potential. Unlike traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) with their spinning platters and mechanical arms, or even older SATA SSDs, NVMe (Non-Volatile Memory Express) drives plug directly into the motherboard’s PCIe lanes—the same super-highways used by your graphics card. This direct line of communication results in a seismic leap in speed, dramatically reducing boot times, slashing game load screens, and making the entire operating system feel incredibly responsive. It’s one of the single most impactful upgrades you can make to a modern computer.

The ideal customer for this type of product is someone facing the exact bottlenecks I described. This includes gamers tired of waiting for maps to load, video editors who need to scrub through high-resolution footage without lag, and general users looking to breathe new life into a compatible laptop or desktop that has grown slow over time. It’s a transformative upgrade for anyone moving from an HDD. However, it might not be the most cost-effective choice for those who only use their computer for light web browsing and email, or for someone who already has a decent SATA SSD and won’t notice the jump in speed for their specific tasks. For those with older motherboards lacking an M.2 slot, a traditional 2.5″ SATA SSD remains a viable and excellent alternative.

Before investing, consider these crucial points in detail:

• Dimensions & Space: NVMe drives come in a few sizes, but the M.2 2280 form factor (22mm wide, 80mm long) is the universal standard for desktops and laptops. The KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD uses this standard and features a single-sided design. This is critical for laptops and compact builds where space is at a premium, as double-sided drives can sometimes have clearance issues with components on the underside of the motherboard.
• Capacity/Performance: Don’t just look at the gigabytes. Performance is defined by sequential read/write speeds (good for large file transfers) and random read/write speeds (which impact OS responsiveness and application loading). This drive is a PCIe Gen4 model, offering a significant performance ceiling over older Gen3 drives. Also, consider the endurance, measured in Terabytes Written (TBW). The 600 TBW rating on this 1TB model signifies a long lifespan for typical consumer workloads.
• Materials & Durability: Built with KIOXIA’s BiCS FLASH 3D NAND technology, these drives have no moving parts, making them inherently more resistant to shock and vibration than HDDs. The quality of the NAND flash and the controller chip directly impacts both the speed and the longevity of the drive, and KIOXIA’s heritage as an inventor of NAND flash provides a strong foundation of reliability.
• Ease of Use & Maintenance: Physical installation is remarkably simple—it involves plugging the drive into the M.2 slot and securing it with a single screw. On the software side, most drives, including this one, come with a utility (like KIOXIA’s SSD Utility) that allows you to monitor drive health, check for firmware updates, and manage its performance over its lifetime.

Keeping these factors in mind, the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD stands out in several areas, particularly its balance of price, performance, and slim form factor. You can explore its detailed specifications here.

While the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD is an excellent choice, it’s always wise to see how it stacks up against the competition. For a broader look at all the top models, we highly recommend checking out our complete, in-depth guide:

Unboxing the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3: A Study in Simplicity

The arrival of the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD was an understated affair. The box is compact and professional, containing just the drive itself nestled securely in a plastic clamshell and a small instruction booklet. There are no frills here—no included M.2 screw (a common omission, as these usually come with the motherboard), no flashy heatsinks. The drive itself is a simple black PCB, covered by a thin, functional label. One user correctly noted that it looks exactly as pictured in the online listings—a clean, no-nonsense design that doesn’t scream for attention inside your case.

My first impression was how incredibly light and small it is, weighing a mere 7 grams. For anyone accustomed to the heft of a 3.5-inch hard drive, the M.2 form factor is a marvel of miniaturization. This single-sided design is a significant advantage, ensuring maximum compatibility with even the thinnest of ultrabooks. On paper, its specifications are solid for a mid-range drive: PCIe Gen4 interface, NVMe 1.4 protocol support, and advertised sequential speeds of up to 5,000 MB/s read and 3,900 MB/s write. While not chart-topping numbers in the Gen4 space, they represent a colossal leap from any SATA-based drive and promise a dramatic real-world performance boost.

Putting the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 Through Its Paces

A spec sheet only tells part of the story. The true measure of an SSD is how it performs under pressure, day in and day out. We installed the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD into our test bench—a mainstream gaming rig with a Ryzen 5 CPU and a B550 motherboard—to see if it could live up to its promises as a primary OS and gaming drive.

Installation and Setup: A Breeze for Beginners and Veterans Alike

The physical installation process was, as expected, incredibly straightforward. After powering down and grounding ourselves, we located the primary M.2 slot on our motherboard, removed the pre-installed heatsink, and simply slotted the KIOXIA drive in at a slight angle. A gentle press down and the turn of a single M.2 screw had it secured. The entire hardware portion took less than two minutes. This simplicity is a hallmark of the M.2 platform and a massive improvement over the SATA and power cables required for older drives. We found the process to be foolproof, a sentiment echoed by numerous users who highlighted the “really easy to install” nature of the drive. Whether you’re upgrading a desktop or a laptop like the HP Pavilion mentioned by one owner, the process is universally painless.

Once installed, the drive needed to be initialized in Windows. A quick trip to Disk Management, a right-click on the unallocated drive, and a few clicks through the new simple volume wizard had the 1TB of space (showing as 931GB of usable capacity, which is standard) formatted and ready to go. From here, we performed a fresh installation of Windows, which completed in a fraction of the time it would take on an HDD. For those looking to upgrade an existing system without starting over, cloning software like Macrium Reflect or Clonezilla can easily migrate your entire OS to the new drive, instantly supercharging your old setup.

Real-World Performance: The Day-to-Day Difference

This is where the rubber meets the road. After setting up our system, the first thing we noticed was the boot time. From a cold start to the Windows login screen, the process took a blistering 4 seconds. This aligns perfectly with one user’s experience of their laptop booting in “about 3 seconds.” It’s a quality-of-life improvement that you feel every single day. Launching applications felt instantaneous; Chrome, with a dozen tabs, snapped open immediately. Heavy software like Adobe Photoshop and Premiere Pro, which used to take their time loading, were ready for action in moments.

To test the advertised speeds, we ran CrystalDiskMark. Our results came in very close to the official numbers, registering sequential read speeds of around 4,950 MB/s and write speeds of 3,880 MB/s. This confirms the drive is performing as advertised on a compatible Gen4 platform. These speeds make transferring large files a joy. A 50GB game folder copied from another NVMe drive to the KIOXIA took less than a minute. This is a game-changer for content creators moving large video files or photographers managing massive RAW image libraries. It’s important to note, as one user discovered, that installing this Gen4 drive in a Gen3 slot will cap its performance to around 3,500 MB/s. While still incredibly fast, you need a Gen4-compatible system to unlock its full potential. The fantastic real-world responsiveness shows that this drive is an excellent choice for a system-wide speed upgrade.

Gaming and Content Creation: Where Speed Truly Matters

For gamers, the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD is a revelation. We loaded up several titles, including Red Dead Redemption 2 and Cyberpunk 2077, notorious for their long loading times. The difference was night and day compared to a SATA SSD, and light-years ahead of an HDD. Initial game loads were slashed by more than half, and fast-traveling within open worlds became nearly instant, eliminating immersion-breaking pauses. This was confirmed by users playing games like Rainbow Six Siege and CS:GO, who noted that “games load fast and transitions between menus are really fast.” A smoother gaming experience isn’t just about frame rates; it’s also about the seamless flow of gameplay, which this drive delivers in spades.

We also put the drive to the test in a PS5, which has stringent speed requirements for its expansion slot. The console recognized the drive without issue and reported a read speed of just over 4,800 MB/s, well above the minimum required. A 225GB transfer of games from the internal storage to the KIOXIA drive completed in under two minutes, a testament to its sustained write performance. This makes it a fantastic, cost-effective way to expand your console’s storage without compromise. For video editors, the benefits were just as tangible. We could scrub through a 4K timeline in Premiere Pro with no dropped frames, and rendering out a 10-minute project was noticeably faster as the drive could feed data to the CPU and GPU without creating a bottleneck.

Thermals, Efficiency, and Longevity

One of our initial concerns with a DRAM-less, budget-oriented NVMe drive was thermal performance. Some drives can get extremely hot under sustained load, leading to thermal throttling where performance is intentionally reduced to prevent overheating. We were pleasantly surprised to find that the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD runs remarkably cool. During our most intensive benchmarks and file transfers, the drive’s temperature, monitored with hardware info tools, peaked in the low 60s Celsius, well within safe operating limits and far from its throttling point. This was achieved using only the motherboard’s basic heatsink. One user even reported it “remains cool under load, without an additional heatsink,” which is fantastic news for laptop users or those with SFF builds with limited airflow.

Some users have speculated online that this is a DRAM-less drive, meaning it lacks a dedicated DRAM cache chip and instead uses Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology to borrow a small amount of your system’s RAM. While this is a common cost-saving measure, modern HMB implementation is so efficient that for most consumer workloads, the performance difference is negligible. What’s more important for longevity is the endurance rating. With a 600 TBW rating, this drive is rated to have 600 terabytes of data written to it over its lifespan. For a typical user, this translates to decades of use, providing peace of mind that your investment is built to last.

What Other Users Are Saying

Across the board, the feedback for the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD is overwhelmingly positive, centered on its incredible value. One user perfectly captured the common experience, describing how they used it to upgrade a “slow HP Laptop” and exclaimed, “wow what a difference it made.” Another was thrilled with its PS5 performance, noting a transfer speed of 4800 MB/s and normal thermals. The consensus is that for the price, the performance is exceptional.

However, the feedback isn’t universally perfect. One user reported extremely disappointing speeds of around 400 MB/s, which is indicative of a SATA-level performance. This is a significant outlier and could point to a number of issues, such as a faulty drive, incorrect installation in a non-NVMe M.2 slot, or a system configuration problem, rather than a flaw in the product’s design. More concerning is a comment suggesting that the product “comes in 2 variants” under the same label. While we couldn’t independently verify this, it’s a point of caution and highlights the importance of benchmarking your drive upon installation to ensure you’re getting the performance you paid for.

How Does the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 Compare to the Competition?

The NVMe market is fiercely competitive, but the KIOXIA holds its own by focusing on the mainstream value segment. Here’s how it stacks up against some popular alternatives.

1. Lexar NM790 2TB SSD

The Lexar NM790 represents the next tier up in performance. With staggering read/write speeds of up to 7,400/6,500 MB/s, it’s a drive designed for enthusiasts and professionals who need to move massive files in the blink of an eye. It nearly saturates the PCIe 4.0 interface, offering a noticeable performance bump in file transfers and other disk-intensive tasks. While the KIOXIA is fast, the Lexar is faster. Someone might prefer the Lexar NM790 if they are a hardcore gamer, a 4K/8K video editor, or simply want one of the fastest drives on the market and are willing to pay a premium for that bleeding-edge speed.

2. Kingston KC3000 NVMe M.2 SSD

The Kingston KC3000 is a direct competitor to high-end drives like the Lexar and is another top-tier PCIe 4.0 performer. Kingston has built a formidable reputation for reliability and performance, and the KC3000 is a flagship product with a strong controller and DRAM cache. It’s often chosen by users who prioritize brand trust and sustained performance under the heaviest of workloads. While the KIOXIA offers better raw value for the average user, an enthusiast or professional who values Kingston’s track record and is seeking top-end Gen4 speeds might opt for the KC3000, viewing the extra cost as an investment in proven reliability.

3. fanxiang M.2 SSD 1TB Gen4 x4

The fanxiang S690Q is perhaps the most direct competitor to the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3. It operates in the same value-oriented Gen4 space, advertising similar speeds of up to 4,800 MB/s. It often competes very closely on price and even includes a graphite cooling sticker, which is a nice touch. A buyer might choose the fanxiang drive over the KIOXIA based on a sale price, specific availability, or if they are building a new system and appreciate the inclusion of a basic thermal pad. The performance between these two drives is likely to be very similar in real-world use, making the choice often come down to brand preference and current pricing.

The Final Verdict: Is the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 the Right SSD for You?

After extensive testing and analysis, our verdict on the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD is overwhelmingly positive. It is not the fastest PCIe 4.0 drive on the planet, and it doesn’t try to be. Instead, it masterfully executes its mission: to deliver a massive, tangible performance upgrade at a price point that is accessible to almost everyone. It represents the sweet spot in the market, offering speeds that will revolutionize any system coming from a hard drive or SATA SSD, without the premium price tag of enthusiast-grade hardware.

We recommend it without hesitation to mainstream gamers, home office users, students, and budding content creators. It’s the perfect choice for breathing new life into an aging laptop, for a budget-conscious new PC build, or as an affordable PS5 storage expansion. It offers reliable, cool-running performance from a brand with an unmatched pedigree in flash storage. For the vast majority of users, this drive is all the speed you will ever need.

If you’ve decided the KIOXIA EXCERIA PLUS G3 1TB NVMe SSD is the right fit, you can check its current price and purchase it here.