Introduction

Plextor M7V Series SSD with 15nm Toshiba TLC NAND
Value for money at 30 cents per GB

Join us in a review of the new Plextor M7V series SSDs, with that 'V' for value. The M7V series is all about delivering a product at a low price to you. It is an SSD series that uses Toshiba's proprietary 15nm NAND modules, TLC written. We test the Plextor M7V 512GB SSD and 512GB M.2 SSD. The M7V is the succesor to the cost-effective M6V series and will be available in both 2.5-inch and M.2 form-factors. The M7V series is going to be available in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, and 512 GB. Both the 2.5-inch and M.2 M7V is controlled by a Marvell 88SS1074B1 processor tied to Toshiba's new 15nm TLC NAND flash memory. These SSDs respectively come with DDR3 DRAM caches of 256 MB, 512 MB, and 768 MB. There is one exception, the 512 GB M.2 model features a large 1 GB DRAM cache.

All models offer sequential transfer rates of up to 560 MB/s reads and up to 500 MB/s, 530 MB/s, and 530 MB/s, respectively on write performance. Plextor rates a TBW tolerance of 80 TB, 160 TB, or 320 TB tied towards the voume size of the SSD. Value for money wise you will receive a SSD series that is fast enough, yet it won't break your wallet.

 
Yes, in a storage world dominated by big guns like Micron and Samsung margins are getting smaller and smaller. Plextor needed to address that to get the price per gigabyte down and offer a competitive solution that is fast, will be excellent in any PC and obviously a product that can compete with the Samsung 850 EVO in both price and performance. To do so they offer their V series, the M7V series SSD with a Marvel 88SS1074B1 controller steers all new A19 15nm TLC based NAND flash memory in toggle mode from Toshiba to drive their SSDs to a bargain level. The price is low thanks to the TLC NAND, but that does come at the cost of lower write performance under hefty load. The M7V series is rated at Random read/write up to 98 K/ 84K IOPS. As long as you do not write gigabytes continously over and over, and thus use M7V in a PC or Laptop for normal usage, then you are looking at an SSD performing in the 550/560 MB/sec range. Not bad at 30 cents per GB eh?

It was only a year and a half ago that we wrote that SSD prices had settled at just under 1 EURO per GB for the end-user, last year prices have been hovering at 70 cents per GB and currently you can already find SSDs priced as low as 30~35 cents (EURO) per Gigabyte of storage volume. The M7V breaks down that price even more at just under 30 cents per GB. 
  

M7V Series 2.5-inch 120GB (TRN150-25SAT3-120G)	€48	560 MB/sec Read - 500 MB/sec Write
M7V Series 2.5-inch 240GB (TRN150-25SAT3-240G)	€71	560 MB/sec Read - 530 MB/sec Write
M7V Series 2.5-inch 480GB (TRN150-25SAT3-480G)	€142	560 MB/sec Read - 530 MB/sec Write

The specs are decent enough by any standard. The models have sustained read levels of close to 560 MB/sec and up-to 500~530 MB/sec respectively. Have a peek first, after which we'll dive into the technology behind it and obviously we'll present you a nice performance overview.