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Japanese memory manufacturer Kioxia doesn’t have the same kind of name recognition as its former parent company, Toshiba, which invented flash memory in the 1980s. But the spun-off company, renamed in 2019 as a combination of the Japanese word for ‘memory and the Greek word for ‘value,’ has remained a major player in cutting-edge solid-state storage, alongside Samsung, Micron / Crucial, SK hynix, and WD / SanDisk.

Kioxia largely sticks to selling flash, SSDs, and related technology to other companies, at least here in the United States. But when a representative from Kioxia Europe reached out about testing a consumer-focused external SSD, the Exceria Plus G2, I was curious to see what the drive was capable of and how it would stack up against the best external SSDs we’ve tested, despite the fact that this pocket-friendly drive isn’t officially available in the U.S.

As a 10 Gbps (USB 3.2 Gen2) SSD, I knew it wasn’t going to break any speed records, but how does this drive stand up against competing compact metal-shelled offerings like the SK hynix Beetle X31 and the various X9s and X10s from Crucial? Read on to see our benchmark results. But first, here are the specs for the Exceria Plus G2, direct from Kioxia:

Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 (2TB) specifications

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Product

500 GB

1 TB

2 TB

Interface / Protocol

USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps)

USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps)

USB 3.2 Gen2 (10 Gbps)

Included

USB-C, USB-A cables

USB-C, USB-A cables

USB-C, USB-A cables

Sequential Read

Up to 1,050 MB/s

Up to 1,050 MB/s

Up to 1,050 MB/s

Sequential Write

Up to 1,000 MB/s

Up to 1,000 MB/s

Up to 1,000 MB/s

Dimensions

72 x 40 x 11.8 mm

72 x 40 x 11.8 mm

72 x 40 x 11.8 mm

Weight

42 grams

42 grams

42 grams

Warranty

3 years

3 years

3 years

Design and accessories

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The black metal aluminum shell of the Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 feels very solid in my hand, and the convex top and bottom feel distinctive. This design may cause some complications, though, for those who like to use Velcro or other materials to stick their drives to the side of a camera, phone, or the lid of their laptop.

Kioxia thoughtfully includes both a USB-C-to-USB-A and a USB-C-to-USB-C cable along with the drive, both of which are about a foot long, including the plugs. A tiny activity light lives on the end of the drive, next to the USB-C port.

Pricing

You can find the Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 for sale in the U.S. via third-party sellers or on eBay, but generally not at competitive prices. At Amazon in the U.K., the 2TB model we tested was selling for £149 when I wrote this, with the 1TB version going for £93 and the 512GB capacity for £65. SK hynix’ competing Beetle X31 (another 10 Gbps drive with a metal shell), was selling for a little less: £137 for the 2TB model and £82 for the 1TB.

But both those drives are undercut in the U.K. by Crucial’s X9 Pro (which we tested alongside the X10 Pro), at just £108 in the 2TB capacity. The Crucial drive was on sale when I priced out these drives, but it seems clear that, at least in the U.K., Kioxia’s drive faces stiff competition when it comes to price.

Software

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The drive itself arrives empty, but Kioxia does offer a downloadable SSD Utility on its website that lets you monitor drive health, update firmware if necessary, and password-protect the drive. It is a bit curious that the company doesn’t include an installer or at least a link on the drive itself, especially given that the Exceria Plus G2 features 256-bit AES hardware encryption. But the program is intuitively laid out and feature-packed, should you search it out and install it.

Comparison products

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At 72 x 40 x 11.8 mm and 42 grams, the Exceria Plus G2 is smaller than many competing drives. The SK hynix Beetle X31 is thicker and heavier (74 X 46 X 14.8 mm, 53 grams), but Crucial’s X10, X10 Pro, and X9 drives remain among the smallest, at 65 x 50 x 10 mm and the same 42 grams as the Kioxia drive.

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Beyond minute measuring contests, though, most major external SSDs are similarly pocket-friendly and light these days, unless you count models like LaCie’s Rugged SSD Pro, which is a bulky 150 grams thanks to its rubber exterior and the internal cooling necessary for Thunderbolt 5-class speeds.

Storage testbed update

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Earlier in 2025, we updated our external storage testbed to an AMD Ryzen 7600X-based PC with an Asus ROG Crosshair X870E Hero motherboard, installed in Lian Li’s Lancool 217 case. This was done in part because we needed a system with native USB4 support for upcoming drives.

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All the drives in the charts below have been re-tested on the new X870E system, with the exception of the final Iometer sustained sequential test, which is less about top speed and more about how long a drive can write before depleting any fast cache. We also updated to CrystalDiskMark 8, rather than the older (and non-comparable) version 7 we used on the previous testbed.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

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In this first test, the Kioxia drive didn’t exactly impress; It landed last among the drives we recently retested. That said, its score of 974 wasn’t far from most other 10 Gbps drives, which tend to top out around 1,150 points on this test.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

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In this real-world file transfer, the Kioxia Exceria G2 looked a little better, beating out the SK hynix Beetle X31 and Seagate’s flash-drive-like Ultra-Compact SSD.

Synthetic Testing CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-run storage benchmarking tool that SSD companies commonly use to assign product performance specifications. It gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes. We run this test at its default settings.

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In this best-case synthetic scenario on our overhauled testbed, the Kioxia drive managed to edge out three other drives, but landed slightly behind SK hynix and Crucial’s competitors.

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Small file performance is one area where the Kioxia drive shines. It lands behind the SK hynix Beetle X31 and Seagate Ultra-Compact SSD once again, but ahead of many other drives, including some with a faster 20 Gbps interface.

Sustained Write Performance

A drive’s rated write specifications are only a piece of the performance picture. Most external SSDs (just like their internal counterparts) implement a write cache, or a fast area of flash, programmed to perform like fast SLC, that absorbs incoming data.

Sustained write speeds often suffer tremendously when the workload saturates the cache and slips into the “native” TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated.

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The Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 again looks good on this most demanding of tests, managing to write for close to 12 minutes at above 1,000 MB/s (and slightly above its rated write speed), before dropping below 400 MB/s for the remainder of our test. If you need something that can handle lengthier sustained writes than that, you should probably opt for something like the Crucial X9 Pro, or better yet, something with a faster USB interface if your systems support it.

Bottom line

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With a solid, small metal shell, hardware-based encryption, solid (if not class-leading) 10 Gbps performance, and USB-C and USB-A cables included in the box, Kioxia Exceria Plus G2 is a decent option for backing up or transporting your important data. Whether or not it stands out is largely down to its price in your region, as it’s not officially available in the U.S. But if it costs less than competing drives like the SK hynix Beetle X31 or Crucial’s X9 where you live, it’s easy to recommend.

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