Plextor M5 Pro (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on August 31, 2012 11:32 AM ESTThe M3 Pro was one of the fastest SATA 6Gbps SSDs we have tested and I was certain that the M5 Pro would take the crown since it was supposed to be faster than the M3 Pro. However, even though the M5 Pro is faster than the M3 Pro in all of our synthetic tests, it pretty much breaks even in our Storage suites. That doesn't mean that the M5 Pro is slow by any means, it's simply not much of an upgrade. As the M3 Pro is phased out, the M5 Pro will at least be a suitable replacement.
The bigger issue is power consumption. One of the main reasons I liked the M3 Pro was its extremely low power consumption. The M5 Pro consumes significantly more power and performance is only slightly better. For desktop users, the increased power consumption should not be an issue but purchasing decisions for notebook drives are often driven by power efficiency. Higher power consumption obviously leads to worse battery life.
Dealing with a new controller is not always easy, though. Plextor has been using Marvell's 9174 controller since the M2 series, so the same controller has been used in five different SSDs. Plextor has had plenty of time to tweak the 9174 firmware and that's clearly visible in the M3 Pro: performance is finely tuned and the firmware is mature. The M5 Pro, on the other hand, is their first product to use the new 9187 controller and firmware. It's also Plextor's first drive to use 19nm Toshiba NAND. Integrating smaller process geometry NAND has always been a performance challenge, it's possible that we're just seeing the outcome of those difficulties. Finally there's the chance that we're simply hitting the limits of what you can get over 6Gbps SATA. The M5 Pro is by no means a slow drive, it's clearly among the fastest we've tested. There's only so much parallelism you can extract from smaller transfers, and at the high end we've been gated by the SATA interface's limitations.
Despite not breaking any records, the M5 Pro is a good drive. Without any huge increases in performance via firmware updates however, the M5 Pro needs to be competitive on price. The M3 Pro wasn't priced as aggressively as it needed to be, but with the M5 Pro Plextor has another chance.
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scottwilkins - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
@bji: while not "immature", SSD is stil much younger than Winchester drive technology.@sheh: I wouldn't keep data on a Winchester longer than I would on an SSD. IMHO.
B3an - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Irrelevant. You'll get many years out of any SSD, enough for any consumer. The people who buy these sort of performance SSD's usually upgrade again within 2 or 3 years anyway. I upgrade every 18 months.Neutron bomb - Sunday, September 9, 2012 - link
Yes, flash memory loses its charge eventually, but eventually may be a very long way off. Does anyone know just how long it takes before flash memory begins to lose its charge?Beenthere - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Actually SSD tech is very IMMATURE TECH and this is proven weekly with the need for frequent firmware updates, compatibility and reliability issues, lost data, lost drive capacity, frequent RMAs, missing TRIM function, etc.Just because half-baked SSDs have been sold for a number of years doesn't mean that the tech is sorted, reliable or standardised. In fact the tech changes almost monthly and has proven to be quite unreliable/incompatible.
Anand himself stated about a year ago that SSD tech was "immature" and that statement is still true today. He suggested back then to wait 6-12 months from the time an SSD was released to see how it pans out.
Unfortunately the same advice is still appropriate today - to wait 6-12 months as the SSD makers are rushing half-baked crap to market for undeserved profits instead of conducting thorough validation of their products. It doesn't matter what the brand, they are all shipping half-baked SSD products in one form or another and consumers have no means to know what to expect from any given product.
kyuu - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Yeah... what a bunch of bull. Please show me any reputable source showing that late-model SSDs have failure/return rates higher than any other electronic good. You're behind the times; SSDs have gotten cheaper, and the issues have mostly been sorted. The major issues were pretty much isolated to Sandforce drives anyway.No, SSDs aren't perfect, but nothing is. HDDs go bad, have issues, are DoA as well, just like any consumer electronic. Your propoganda aimed at scaring people away from SSDs is disingenuous at best.
mura - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
I have been using SSD extensively for the last two years - and (knock on wood) none of them has failed me yet. (4 x Intel X25V, 2 x Samsung 470, 2 x Samsung 830, Kingston V200+, Intel X18M, just to name a few - I don't remember the others exactly).They work in desktop computers, workstations and notebooks, and even in my office server. These machines FLY.
Oh, and to mention, almost all of these were bought, because some HDD has started producing bad sectors(mostly within the warranty period, but I did not want another slow and crappy product).
cosminmcm - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
Come on guys, this is beenthere, why do you even bother?waldojim42 - Sunday, September 2, 2012 - link
As an owner of a Plextor M3 256GB drive (no S or P - this was made before then) I suffer none of the issues you commented about. I have never touched the firmware, it has been perfectly reliable, lost no data, and has yet to make me even consider an RMA. This is why people like me are willing to pay more for a quality product.When you talk about the immature drives, remember to differentiate a bit. The CHEAP drives are immature. Intel, Samsung, and Plextor all make top notch drives that easily rival the die hard 15K SCSI drives.
poccsx - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
A-men to thatdishayu - Friday, August 31, 2012 - link
This is my first SSD for sure! Thanks for the review, although it took so much more time than expected.