Overview

Plextor M6S series SSD gets tested

We review the Plextor M6S SSD. Plextor recently released this new addition to their SSD lineup. The series is to compete with Samsung and Crucial mostly, in both price and performance. The end result is a very capable and fast SSD that can keep up with the competitive guns in the market, yet remains attractively priced.

The NAND flash storage solutions market is tough. Basically all manufacturers have placed products on the market that are SATA3 compatible. And with that interface reaching its limits, many of these manufacturers run into that very same limitation making all these guys perform really close to each other. For the consumer that is great as your main focus does not have to be the SSD performance that much anymore. No you focus should be reliability, endurance and obviously price. So, with the arrival of new 20nm NAND Flash based M6S SSDs, this series is aimed at high-end class consumers. The new M6S SSDs debut in storage capacities of 128, 256 and 512 GB. The series will be based on a Marvell 88SS9187 controller tied to a DRAM cache and Toshiba NAND flash memory. That last one is the bigger change, the transition of opting newer NAND flash memory which is now 20nm MLC NAND.

Now, we've been testing NAND Flash based storage ever since the very beginning. And I've stated it a couple of times already, it really is surprising to see where we have gotten in such a rapid time-frame. The SSD market is fierce and crowded though. While stability and safety of your data have become a number one priority for the manufacturers, the technology keeps advancing at a fast pace as it does, the performance numbers a good SSD offers these days are simply breathtaking. 450 to 550 MB/sec on SATA3 is the norm for a single controller based SSD. Next to that, over the past year NAND flash memory (the storage memory used inside an SSD) has become much cheaper as well. Prices now roughly settle well under 1 USD per GB. That was two to threefold two years ago. As such SSD technology and NAND storage has gone mainstream. The market is huge, fierce and competitive, but it brought us to where we are today... nice volume SSDs at acceptable prices with very fast performance. Not one test system in my lab has an HDD, everything runs on SSD, while I receive and retrieve my bigger chunks of data from a NAS server here in the office. The benefits are performance, speed, low power consumption and no noise. You can say that I evangelize SSDs, yes Sir... I am a fan, an SSD addict if you will.

For the Plextor M6S series it is even better, the prices of these SSDs are going to be very competitive alright, have a peek aat some street prices I just looked up:

• Plextor M6S 128 GB - € 75 / €0,58 GB
• Plextor M6S 256 GB - € 131 / €0,51 GB
• Plextor M6S 512 GB - € 303 / €0,59 GB

For today's review we'll put the successor of the M5 series under the microscope. The new M6S SSDs ships in capacities up to 512 GB. These SSDs can reach speeds of up to 94,000/80,000 IOPS on random read and writes as well as 520/440 MB/s speeds on sequential read and writes. 

Let's start up the review, shall we?

Plextor 256GB M6S SSD with 256 GB 20nm Toshiba NAND and the Marvell 88SS9187 controller