The Plextor M3 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 5, 2012 3:05 AM ESTFinal Words
Let's be frank: I'm surprised. When I first got the Plextor M3, I wasn't expecting much from it. A Marvell based SSD from a smaller, somewhat unknown SSD brand is not too promising. If this had been a SandForce based SSD, then we all know what the performance would be like since all OEMs except Intel use the stock firmware. However, Marvell's controllers require a lot more work as the stock firmware that Marvell provides is in need of work. Having your own firmware team is a must if you plan on competing anywhere other than the low-end market. That requires capital, which can be an obstacle for a small firm. With Plextor being a subsidiary of a massive company, they should have the capital they need, and judging by the peformance results, they do.
The Plextor M3 isn't the fastest drive we have tested, but it comes in very close in many tests. It's clearly the fastest Marvell based SSD and it beats its Marvell siblings quite handily in most metrics. SandForce has been and still is extremely fast, but what Plextor has shown is that Marvell's controllers can keep up with SandForce when equipped with great firmware.
I've only really got two complaints. The first one is Plextor's pricing. I think Plextor may be pricing themselves out of competition in the smaller capacities. While the price difference with other brands in 64GB and 128GB capacities is only about $15 on average, that's quite a lot when put into perspective. In percentages, the 64GB M3 is 16% and the 128GB M3 is 9% more expensive than the other drives on average. If you could save 10% on each component in a new system, most people will opt for pricing over brand name.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (4/2/2012) | ||||
| 64GB | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB | |
| Plextor M3 | $110 | $180 | $340 | $660 |
| Crucial m4 | $88 | $155 | $315 | $630 |
| Intel 520 Series | $110 | $180 | $345 | $800 |
| Samsung 830 Series | $105 | $185 | $300 | $780 |
| OCZ Vertex 3 | $90 | $178 | $340 | $770 |
In my opinion, the M3 would be a lot more attractive if Plextor lowered the prices of 64GB and 128GB models by even $10. 64GB and 128GB capacities are often the most popular capacities right now (as spending $300+ on a single SSD is quite rare), so if you want to be competitive, that's the niche you should focus in. Plextor could even increase the pricing on their higher capacity drives while still remaining competitive. Then again, perhaps Plextor is hoping to skip directly to the more lucrative 256GB and 512GB market, as the lower capacity market is already quite cutthroat.
My second complaint is that reviewing the M3 made me lust for something better, and it's called the M3 Pro. The controller is the same Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2 but Plextor has taken the firmware one step further and this has resulted in better performance. I'm not going to go into detail about the M3 Pro here, but it reportedly provides up to 540MB/s read and 450MB/s write speeds along with random read of 75K IOPS and 69K IOPS random write. Hopefully we will be able to get our hands on a review sample soon.
Overall, Plextor M3 is a good performer - and we didn't notice any issues during our testing. It's fast in every aspect, has good gargabe collection, and isn't too power hungry. There is one big unknown though: Reliability. Current generation Marvell based SSDs in general have been fairly reliable, especially when put against SandForce, but firmware plays such a big role with the Marvell controller that you can't really know for sure.
Compatibility and reliability can take months to months to truly understand, so as always proceed with caution. There are great, known good solutions on the market at competitive prices already so there's no need to take a risk on an SSD before its reliability has been proven.
In any case, it's good to see that Marvell's controller still has legs.
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Kutark - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I thought it kind of odd that the author hadn't heard of plextor until a couple of months ago. IMO basically anybody who had been building their own comps since the mid 90's should at least have heard of the brand.I wonder how old the author is. This kind of reminds me of when you mention Everquest in a conversation and the WOW generation has no clue what you're talking about.
BTW im not meaning to imply or say anything negative about the author, it just struck me as an odd thing to say.
Kutark - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Well, had i read the comments i would seen that the author is 18, which explains quite a lot (again, not in a bad way)jabber - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I thought the Plextor of old went bust years ago and the name was bought up by someone else?Basically standard goods with the Plextor name silkscreened on for 50% extra mark up.
I just threw out my trusty Plextor 712SA drive after about 8 years hard use.
Topweasel - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
No, as DVD burners became throwaway items (Sub $50) they started to offer re-branded parts, but higher quality ones. You could still tell from little things like the tray mechanism that they weren't Plextor. They also ran into a stumbling block with optics for DVD burners for the few they still manufactured. Since they are compared to the big ones, more of a boutique designer they had trouble at 16x+ of eeking out that last bit of quality. Which meant for their more expensive drives, they weren't king of the hill, meaning if reliability and not burning performance or burn quality were your concerns, then you wouldn't pay the extra amount. For the rebrands, they were actually price competitive even if they were like $5-$10 bucks more.Then came Blu-Ray drives. That did almost kill them. No one was/is buying them. Not like they would DVD drives. Internal drives also never hit the extremes that for example a DVD drive did at launch where they were $300-$400. So once again they were manufacturing expensive drives that no one was buying, and they couldn't even rebrand to make it more price competitive. That's why they went to SSD's, unlike OCZ that made the move because SSD's where much higher margin parts. Plextor did it to survive. But again they don't even have to make to many of these. Plextor makes its living as a low volume high quality high performance manufacturer. Even at their worse in 2008-2010, they were only just as good as everyone else. SSD's are just a product that they can produce that performance actually matters and higher prices are acceptable.
But no Plextor today is the same Plextor of old. Just with a new focus, but same goal.
Beenthere - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Plextor has the potential to sell some decent SSDs. I think the M3 Pro should be the base model with the 3M pricing and Plextor should work on a true Pro model. The Pro pricing is unacceptable and the M3 performance lacking IMO.GrizzledYoungMan - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Any reason to use 10.2 over 10.6?Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
From a user's standpoint, no. For reviews it's important to use the same set of software and drivers as an updated version may impact performance. In other words, we would have to test all SSDs again if we updated Intel RST to 10.6. That's why we are sticking with 10.2, at least for now.Maiyr - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
"Plextor as a brand is probably a new acquaintance for most people and I have to admit that I had not heard of Plextor until a couple of months ago."I must be getting old. That just seems crazy to me.
Maiyr
jwilliams4200 - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
With regards to idle power, the 256GB Crucial m4 shows half the idle power of the 256GB Vertex 4 in your chart, but they both have the same amount of synchronous flash.And since they are both using a Marvell controller (the V4 has a rebadged Marvell 88SS9187, the m4 has an 88SS9174), it is clear that the biggest factor in idle power consumption is NOT the amount and type of flash memory.
Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 6, 2012 - link
You really need some proof that the Indilinx Everest 2 is just a rebadged Marvell 88SS9187, I've seen nothing that indicates so.Of course the controller draws power as well and it can lead to high power consumption, so NAND is definitely not the only factor - I was only pointing out that Toggle NAND is more power efficient. It's possible that a future firmware update will decrease the power consumption of Vertex 4, that happened with Vertex 3 at least.