Plextor M5S 256GB Review
by Kristian Vättö on July 18, 2012 3:00 AM ESTFinal Words
In a nutshell, the M5S performs exactly like the M3. It's not the fastest SSD in the market, but it provides balanced all-around performance. Some SSD manufacturers rely on compromises and only concentrate on certain areas of performance. A prime example is SandForce. It does well as long as you feed the drive with compressible data - once you switch to incompressible data it's a whole different story. Plextor's approach is to provide good performance regardless of the type or size of data, which I think is the best approach.
While the overall performance matches the performance of the M3, there have been some welcome, and unwelcome, changes. The more aggressive garbage collection definitely helps if the drive is used in an OS without open TRIM support (*cough* OS X). However, most buyers will likely be running Windows with TRIM support, so the garbage collection is not a major selling point. Furthermore, the increase in load power consumption is a letdown. Desktop users have nothing to worry about, but for laptop owners it can be a big deal if you have a habit of running on battery most of the time. The power consumption is not awful but it was better in Plextor's previous generation SSDs, thus the disappointment.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (7/16/2012) | ||||
| 64GB | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB | |
| Plextor M5S | $100 (MSRP) | $160 (MSRP) | $300 (MSRP) | N/A |
| Plextor M3 Pro | N/A | $175 | $300 | $680 |
| Plextor M3 | N/A | $130 | $250 | $575 |
| Corsair Performance Series Pro | N/A | $190 | $330 | N/A |
| Crucial m4 | $65 | $115 | $210 | $400 |
| Intel 520 Series | $105 | $150 | $270 | $520 |
| Samsung 830 Series | $85 | $150 | $300 | $720 |
| OCZ Vertex 3 | $100 | $100 | $190 | $530 |
| OCZ Vertex 4 | $100 | $120 | $300 | $700 |
As always, it all boils down to pricing at the end of the day. Plextor's press release says that the M5S will be available mid-July but I couldn't find it at any US resellers yet. Hence all we have is Plextor's suggested retail prices, which I wouldn't give much value. MSRPs tend to be higher than retail prices. A good example is Corsair's Force Series GS that was released a bit over a week ago. Its MSRPs were $190 for 180GB, $240 for 240GB, $350 for 360GB and $490 for 480GB; yet NewEgg was selling the drives for $175, $220, $320 and $450 on the launch day. I would expect the prices of M5S to drop to around the same level as the M3 is currently retailing for in a month or so. SSD prices fluctuate a lot anyway so it's impossible to recommend a drive based on pricing because the situation may be totally different tomorrow.
All in all, Plextor's M5S is a good drive but it doesn't really bring anything new to the market. The M3 has been available since late 2011 and the M5S is basically M3 with a couple changes. However, it's evident that something faster is in the works because why would Plextor dump the faster M3 Pro in favor of M5S. It seems that the limits of Marvell's 88SS9174 controller have already been reached, so it's probable that M5S' big brother will be based on Marvell's 88SS9187 controller. We don't know when that is going to be released, but given Plextor's ability to reach top of the class performance with the older 88SS9174, I'm eagerly looking forward to their "M5 Pro" and the controller not being the bottleneck anymore.
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Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
The prices were taken two days ago on July 16th, so some may have changed already. The idea is to provide some kind of idea of pricing, that's all. As you noticed already, prices change all the time so the table is only useful for a few days, hence I don't see a point in making a Europe table as well.Rick83 - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
While geizhals/skinflint is a convenient tool, outside of Germany things usually get much more expensive.Occasionally a good deal in the UK, but component prices in France are often 10% higher, making even the 15 euro shipping appear attractive in some cases....
scbdpa - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
So would you recommend the m3pro or m5s to a user looking to buy a plextor ssd (128gb)?Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
If price is not a concern, the M3 Pro. It's noticeably faster and carries a 5-year warranty.scbdpa - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
price is not the problem. What about if the machine doesn't support TRIM (a standalone audio recorder)?still get the 3pro, or get the m5s with the better garbage collection?
Thanks
name99 - Thursday, July 19, 2012 - link
Depending on what you're doing, an EXTREMELY important characteristic is power. Not idle power, but peak power (which is usually hit during sustained writes). In spite of what some people think, this number, for current SSDs, is usually substantially higher than the equivalent number for a 2.5" HD.So I'd say figure out what's the max sustained power your audio recorder can provide and use that to make your decision. If you don't know, anything below 2.5W (which is what USB-2 provides, and what most 2.5" HDs target) is safe, anything above that and you may be setting yourself up for random crashes.
kmmatney - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
I don't see why one would buy this over the Crucial M4. If I understand correctly, they They both use the same NAND and a similar marvell controller. It looks liek the Plextor firmware is tweaked for better performance, but I don't think there would be any real-life difference. FYI - I have both a Samsung and a Crucial 256GB SSD in my laptop (2 bays) and I can say for certain that their real-life performance is identical.sheh - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
How do you estimate the write amplification?shodanshok - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
Quote, I'm interested on this.Moreover, it is a very pleasant surprise that Plextor managed to both deliver better write amplification and more aggressive garbage collector, as they are usually mutually exclusive.
Thanks.
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
I can't disclose our testing methods (they are kind of like our "trade secrets") but the basic formula for calculating WA is data written to the flash divided by data written by host. For example, if you go and copy a 1GB folder to the SSD and and the SSD ends up writing 3GB, WA would be 3x.Keep in mind that our WA estimation is a worst case scenario, not average WA.