Kioxia's BG7 SSDs Bring More Speed New Form Factors To Mainstream PCs
Kioxia is expanding its range of client solid state drives with its new BG7 series. Most of the new SSDs feature the company's 8th generation BiCS Flash 3D featuring CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA) technology. The only exception is the smallest 256GB capacity model, which employs BiCS Flash generation 6 chips.
The big takeaway here is that Kioxia's new drives will deliver a speed boost to affordable, mainstream laptops, compared to the company's BG6 series introduced back in 2023. Additionally, Kioxia is offering the BG7 series in the same M.2 2280 and M.2 2230 form factors as before, as well as a new (for Kioxia) M.2 2242 variant "to support a broader range of mounting conditions."
For anyone unaware, M.2 is a standard form factor for modern SSDs. The four digits that proceed M.2 refer to the physical size of the drive, with the first two digits designating the width and the last two highlighting the length, both in millimeters. So an M.2 2280 drive is 22mm wide and 80mm long, whereas an M.2 2242 is also 22mm wide, but shorter at 42mm long.
"Storage for client computing applications must keep pace with consumer demand for ultra mobility without compromise," said Neville Ichhaporia, senior vice president and general manager
of the SSD business unit, Kioxia America, Inc. "The new KIOXIA BG7 Series delivers enhanced
performance and power efficiency for end users while remaining economical for our PC OEM
customers."
According to Kioxia, the higher bit density of its latest generation BiCS Flash result in an approximate 10-16% performance improvement compared to its BG6 series. Kioxia's also touting a 67% improvement in sequential write operations versus its previous generation client SSDs.
The BG7 series is being offered in four capacities, including 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. Specs vary by capacity and ramp up as capacities increase, culminating in up to 7,000MB/s for sequential reads, up to 6,000MB/s for sequential writes, and up to 1,000,000 IOPS for both 4K random reads and writes (as shown above).
There's no pricing information on the BG7 series because these are intended for OEMs as opposed to being sold directly to consumers. However, Kioxia refers to this as its "value-oriented" client series, with the DRAM-less design contributing to lower costs. Hopefully, this will help OEMs mitigate some of the price increases caused by a shortage of DRAM and in the consumer market.
Kioxia says select OEM customers are currently evaluating samples of its new BG7 series and they will begin appearing in new PCs in early 2026.
