Plextor M6S & M6M (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 10, 2014 6:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The M6S and M6M are mostly marginal updates to their M5 series counterparts. I believe Plextor's number one goal with the M6S and M6M was to cut costs by utilizing a cheaper controller and smaller lithography NAND and that's why the performance improvements are only minor. It seems that most, if not all, SSD OEMs are preparing for the PCIe era and all the updates we've seen lately have been rather modest with no firmware overhauls to significantly improve performance.
The IO consistency is the biggest issue I have with the M6S and M6M. While I understand that the lighter controller introduces some obstacles in all performance segments, the IO consistency seems to be built deep into Plextor's firmware because the behavior has been the same with all Plextor drives I've tested (even with the M6e). For a light user I don't believe that is a major issue as long as the user keeps ~10-15% of the drive empty, but truth to be told there are other mainstream drives that have far more consistent performance (such as Samsung SSD 840 EVO and Crucial M550).
Another thing the M6S and M6M miss is hardware encryption support and more specifically support for TCG Opal 2.0 and IEEE-1667. There is AES-256 support but only through an ATA password, which isn't the most secure and requires BIOS support to function. Especially for laptop users that can be a deal breaker since laptops are much more vulnerable to theft, and personally I wouldn't use a laptop for any work purposes without some form of encryption.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (4/9/2014) | ||||
| 120/128GB | 240/256GB | 480/512GB | ||
| Plextor M6S (MSRP) | $105 | $170 | $400 | |
| Plextor M6M (MSRP) | $110 | $180 | $420 | |
| Plextor M5 Pro Xtreme | $200 | $230 | $452 | |
| Plextor M5S | $110 | $200 | - | |
| Plextor M5M | $115 | $220 | - | |
| ADATA Premier Pro SP920 (MSRPs) | $90 | $160 | - | |
| ADATA XPG SX910 | $110 | $320 | $600 | |
| Crucial M550 | $100 | $169 | $335 | |
| Crucial M500 | $78 | $120 | $240 | |
| Intel SSD 730 | - | $230 | $480 | |
| Intel SSD 530 | $100 | $220 | - | |
| OCZ Vector 150 | $115 | $190 | $370 | |
| OCZ Vertex 460 | $100 | $266 | $300 | |
| Samsung SSD 840 EVO | $90 | $150 | $280 | |
| Samsung SSD 840 Pro | $120 | $208 | $420 | |
| SanDisk Extreme II | $120 | $215 | $420 | |
| Seagate SSD 600 | $105 | $136 | $380 | |
The MSRPs seem very, very high for a mainstream drive. Plextor's MSRPs have been quite over the top in the past as well and I would expect pricing to drop to M5S levels, but even then the question is: are the M6S and M6M price competitive enough? The 250GB 840 EVO can be had for $50 less than the 256GB M5S, which is substantial considering that the EVO has better performance and support for hardware encryption. Crucial's M500/M550 are alternatives as well with affordable pricing and especially the M500 is unbeatable for value oriented buyers.
Update 4/17: Plextor just sent us updated MSRP pricing, which I've listed in the table above. The changes are rather significant as for example the 512GB M6S drops from $500 to $400, making the pricing much more sensible. The M6S is now close to the M550 and 840 EVO in terms of pricing, although if I had to choose, I'd still go with the M550 or 840 EVO due to better performance and feature set.
All in all, I think it's currently very hard for the tier-two OEMs (i.e. ones without a NAND fab) to compete in the mainstream SSD market. Crucial and Samsung are dominating the market with very aggressive pricing and competitive feature sets. That said, the M6S/M6M can be a decent buy if the prices drop enough, but I find that unlikely to occur due to Crucial's and Samsung's NAND advantage. With better performance and an improved feature set the M6S and M6M could be more competitive, but as it stands there are better options in the market, namely the 840 EVO and M500/M550.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
30 Comments
View All Comments
Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
Yes, there will be a review of the M6e. There has been some issues with testing and hence it's taking this long but it'll be my first priority as soon as we are able to overcome the issues.n3cw4rr10r - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
The prices for SSDs are still high imo. I am surprised they are still holding @ approx $1/gb in most cases.philipma1957 - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
samsung evo is far below $1 a gb and crucial M550's are far below $1 a gbssj3gohan - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
Finally actual proper idle power consumption results! It only took you a bit more than 5 years!HIPM and DIPM have been supported on all desktop systems - all desktop OSes as well as all hardware platforms - since the Athlon 64 X2 and first generation Core 2 (i945 chipset) times. I have been measuring SSD power consumption since they first came out - and yes, ever since the first SSDs, most of them supported the full gamut of power management - and have always been baffled that no review site on the internet has ever published accurate idle power consumption data. You are - aside from a few blogs I have come across - the first one. Congratulations!
Now, it's true that the first instances of especially DIPM were frought with latency issues and for a long time DIPM was turned off by default on Linux kernels (although Windows always forces it on in anything but the 'performance' power profile since Vista). Also, and this is probably the biggest issue, lots of BIOSes do not properly report SATA LPM or have it off by default. As it is usually fairly well hidden away it is not something many people think to turn on.
SATA ALPM is not at all a mobile feature. It has never been. Since support was baked in it has always been available to both laptop and desktop users. And with SSDs spending >>99% in idle, it represents easy and harmless power savings both in the SSD as well as the SATA I/O on the motherboard.
zodiacsoulmate - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
wow nice info!chubbypanda - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
That's right. I always wondered why SSD reviewers at AnandTech claim it's mobile only. It's available at least on Denlow platform for sure.By the way, HIPM/DIPM feature itself is easy to control in Windows with simple registry update:
https://communities.intel.com/message/225489
Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link
"Also, and this is probably the biggest issue, lots of BIOSes do not properly report SATA LPM or have it off by default."That is the issue I had previously. The motherboard in my old testbed doesn't have the option to enable link power management and hence I couldn't perform those tests.
Ethos Evoss - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
Don't understand your tests ...It is all bollocks.. so few months back M5M was best and now it is on bottom ? that is all BULLCRAP
DanNeely - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
The M5M was reviewed a year ago. It's performance was underwhelming compared to sata drives then; but at the time getting an mSata drive at retail was much easier said than done; and at the time it was still a reasonable buy for its money. Since then much better mSata drives have came out and Plextor is trying to charge a premium device price while providing performance much worse than that of competing products that are significantly cheaper.http://anandtech.com/show/6722/plextor-m5m-256gb-m...
Ethos Evoss - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link
Then M6M is NOT big step from M5M .. I have 2x M5M 256GB and they fliesI am not replacing then .. not worth ..