The Plextor M3 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on April 5, 2012 3:05 AM ESTPower Consumption
Plextor shipped us the 256GB model, which is perfect for power comparisons.
The idle power consumption is roughly half of what the Crucial m4 and Intel SSD 320 consume, and less than half when looking at SF-2281 based SSDs like the Vertex 3 and Intel SSD 520. This time it's not just firmware related, though—it's NAND. All the drives in the above graph except the M4 and Samsung SSD 830 use synchronous NAND (ONFi 2.x). As Anand explained in our OCZ Agility 3 review, synchronous NAND is tied to a clock signal. That signal is continuous and hence it constantly uses power, leading to a higher idle power consumption. Toggle-Mode NAND has no active clock signal and hence its DQS signal only uses power during read and write operarions.
For read and write loads, the Plextor M3 appears similar to Intel as they consume more power during sequential write than random write. That's good news because most I/O operations are at least moderately random, so focusing on low random I/O power consumption should result in lower overall power consumption. It's all up to one's workload, of course.
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Tor-ErikL - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
In europe plextor is one of the pioneers in the IT industry. They where one of the first to enter the cd-burner market way back in the days. They are generally known in europe to produce some of the finest quality products when in comes to cd-burners and back in the days it was the only burner to own ;)Tor-ErikL - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I'm not surprised that they come up with another good quality product here, they have always been more expensive than others but you always get a good quality product from them.Fujikoma - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
The last Plextor optical drive I had broke within months. It was very flimsy and the shipping to have it fixed was more than buying a replacment from another vendor that had the same build quality. Plextor's quality isn't any different than other cheap drive manufacturers even though their price is.Maiyr - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I am still using a PleXCombo 20/10/40-12A. My experience in no way mirrors yours. I got this thing and another drive in 2002/2003 and both are still going strong. No problems.Maiyr
hansmuff - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Those were different times.I have two plextor drives:
SCSI UltraPlex 40MAX, the best CD reader ever built.
ATAPI 8/4/32 CD burner. Also a really excellent drive.
Those were "expensive" back then. The ultraplex was $140, the 8/4/32 was ~$90.
After those, drive prices tumbled and Plextor used cheapo OEM drives like everyone else and rebadged them.
Both you and Fukikoma are correct.
vol7ron - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Was going to say something similar.It's like how Seagate has had good drives, but they do have bad batches, especially as they're refining their process.
Quality should not be solely determined on the product. How a company responds to a defective, or poorly made product should extend into the definition of quality. It might not be product quality, but quality of the experience is more important.
Like, I might get a bad part off Newegg, but they have great customer service that make it easy to ship it back and receive a replacement or a refund. I know they're only a middle man in the process, but the tradeoff is having a good product with good customer service, that reduces customer hassle.
Sabresiberian - Saturday, April 7, 2012 - link
The thing that makes me wonder what's going on with your post is the way you describe Plextor's quality as not being better than "any other cheap drive". The fact is, there are near a dozen DVD burner brands that cost less than $25 that are reliable pieces of hardware. They are inexpensive, but they aren't cheap.I'm another person with a Plextor drive that's been around for a couple of builds, and will soon go in a third. Do I think it will outlast my LG drive I bought a couple of years later? No, but Plextor help set reliability and top-notch performance standards that are the reasons we have inexpensive and reliable burners now.
;)
andylawcc - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
ditto: Plextor made one of the best CD-Burner back then (talking only about, just late 1990).note to Mr. Vatto: you could have skipped that the line, we wouldn't know. ;p
JarredWalton - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
Note to our readers: Kristian is 17. When optical drives mattered (in terms of benchmarks), he would have been about 10.Kristian Vättö - Thursday, April 5, 2012 - link
I'm 18 now and have been for a few months ;-)