Plextor M3 Pro (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on July 1, 2012 1:45 PM ESTI think it's safe to say that the M3 Pro is one of the best SSDs we have tested, at least from a performance standpoint. Overall it comes out as essentially the fastest drive in our Heavy and Light suites (it loses to the Samsung 830 in the Heavy suite by a small margin but beats it in the Light suite; likewise, it loses to the Kingston HyperX 3K in our Light suite but beats it in the Heavy suite—both with bigger margins). The M3 Pro is a very good all-around performer, doing well in all aspects without any real Achilles' heel.
Its performance reminds me of Corsair's Performance Series Pro because they both have exceptionally good incompressible sequential write speed, but when it comes to sequential write with compressible data, their performance is average. Plextor has its own firmware team whereas Corsair uses firmware provided by Marvell, but it's possible (even likely) that Plextor's custom firmware is built upon the Marvell firmware.
Not only is the M3 Pro fast, it's also extremely power efficient. The Samsung 830 has been our recommendation, especially for Macs, pretty much since it was released but it has one downside: a relatively high power consumption under load. This isn't an issue if you have a desktop but laptop users are often concerned about their battery life. Thus Plextor's M3 Pro is a great alternative to the Samsung 830 if you want to squeeze every minute of battery life out of your laptop.
Of course, you don't get first class performance for cheap. The M3 Pro is definitely more expensive than other 2.5" SATA SSDs on average. Is the M3 Pro worth the money? As usual, that depends on the user. The Samsung 830 Series has recently been on sale quite often and I admit that it would be hard to justify paying noticeably (+$20) more for the M3 Pro. However, it should be kept in mind that Samsung only offers a 3-year warranty while all Plextor's SSDs come with 5-year warranty, so the extra two years of warranty may be worthwhile for some buyers.
I think Plextor is one of the few OEMs that actually has the chance of challenging SSD giants such as Intel, Samsung, and OCZ. Their firmware team has proven itself to be extremely talented and they definitely have the means for creating a high performance SSD—the M3 and M3 Pro are evidence of that. Plextor is also taking user satisfaction seriously. All their SSDs come with a 5-year warranty, which is something that most OEMs do not offer. Plextool is also a great start and I'm sure future updates will bring at least a few additional desired features.
Ultimately, I would like to see Plextor's regular and Pro lineups merged. I don't think it makes much sense to have two lineups with the exactly same hardware but with different firmware, particularly with the final performance difference isn't all that large. The manufacturing costs are the same, and the higher performing firmware already exists, so why not just make a single lineup with it? In the end, the performance difference between the M3 and M3 Pro is not all that great, which makes it hard to justify the price premium that the M3 Pro commands. A single lineup would allow Plextor to concentrate all of their efforts on making the firmware as good as possible, rather than worrying about handicapping the firmware in order to make the M3.
Short of taking that route, another option would be to equip the regular series (M3 in this case) with cheaper NAND (asynchronous MLC NAND for instance); that would lower the bill of materials and allow Plextor to sell the regular series for even less money, and they could still use the same core firmware without the need to worry about handicapping the cheaper models. This is essentially what OCZ has done with their Agility and Vertex series. I can't say Plextor's current product strategy doesn't work, but personally it would make more sense to focus all you have on just one series and make it as good and competitive as possible.
Either way, I'm anxious to see what Plextor can do with the new Marvell 88SS9187 controller. The M3 Pro is already dangerously fast and I can only imagine that its successor will be significantly improved, with even faster random read and write speeds. We should find out soon enough and Plextor is worthy of being placed on your short list for SSD brands.
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Chaitanya - Sunday, July 1, 2012 - link
I associate names like plextor and lite-on with optical discs. now they are into solid state media as well. wondering whats next.DaFox - Sunday, July 1, 2012 - link
Plextor was amazing back when optical drives were relevant.iamkyle - Sunday, July 1, 2012 - link
You mean, before they stopped manufacturing their own driveslexluthermiester - Sunday, July 1, 2012 - link
Quote; "back when optical drives were relevant."Last time I checked, optical drives are still in very common use for a wide variety of purposes. How are they not still relevant?
HisDivineOrder - Sunday, July 1, 2012 - link
There was a time when a new CD-ROM or DVD-ROM would have people scouring the web for reviews because the new drive would offer greater and greater speeds.Nowadays, people just buy whatever's cheapest or goes good with their case. They MAY look at compatibility with discs beforehand, but often don't if they're looking at a $20 DVD-/+RW. If they do, that's a few user reviews and then bam, bought. If it's crap, they throw it away and buy another.
This is far from the ancient times when a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM would warrant a full-on review with technical read-outs, minor speed differences against other models, etc. There's no point now because they're so cheap and there are no new advances being done in the field because USB storage (flash and hard drives) became so damn cheap along with the proliferation of online with digital storage.
There's a new hotness in town and we should all queue up the Toy Story sad music for ODD's. I imagine all my ODD's talking in the dusty, plastic bin of forgotten tech. They scramble out and reminisce about the times I used to have with them. The old Lite-On DVD-RW chatting with a Plextor CD-RW. A 2x DVD-ROM by Creative talking to a Pioneer DVD-slot. Every now and then, a Zip drive crying, "Hai guyz! Im hear two!"
And them all looking at him, patting him on the head, and saying, "Adults are speaking." Then lil' Zip drive'll look down and mumble something about how he used to be awesome. Meanwhile, my Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, Sound Blaster AWE, Audigy, Audigy 2ZS, Aureal, Diamond 3dFX Voodoo, Voodoo 2 SLI, Matrox G200, they all chat amongst themselves about the days back when PC's were actually hard to build, compatibility was a shot in the dark and a prayer bound by McGuyver's chewing gum, and when installing Windows involved starting it and wandering away for 10 minutes (or less).
The best days are behind us, I think. Strange how the easier things get, the less awesome they feel.
erple2 - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
If these posts were rated, you sir, would receive a +1 from me. Trips down memory lane are always fun to do now and again. I remember amber buying my first Texel drive in the very early 90s because they were so Mich more reliable, and faster.Those were truly the halcyon days...
speculatrix - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
+1So much of what used to be hard is now trivial, and the young generation really don't need to understand how computers work. Sure that's no bad thing for productivity, but means we're raising new generations who are unable to design the next generation of hardware.
Here is Cambridge England I see the average age of engineers rising all the time. Companies struggle to find truly gifted embedded skills.
StevoLincolnite - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Ah, the good old days of setting individual jumpers for a CPU's FSB, multiplier and voltage... Needing a dedicated cable that goes from your optical disk drive to your sound card JUST so you can play Audio...Setting IRQ's in the bios/windows... Fun days for the tinkerer.
Now everything is just plug and play pretty much.
versesuvius - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Let's see an Apple (McIntosh) user go down the memory lane. I suppose theirs turns out to be 1 centimeter in length. Something like:"It was always like this. We paid triple the amount a Windows user did. Then again we were always better than them. Steve Jobs may be gone, but we are still better than them. We are just better. Long live Steve."
Just joking, of course.
tjoynt - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
+1 Internets to you Sir or Mam! Thank you for bringing me down memory lane and reminding me how difficult and exciting it used to be. :) Now that everything pretty much Just Works, much of the fun and mystery is gone.Sure I follow the next hotness too, but building a computer today is like building with legos: just follow the pictures and snap it together. No more IRQ conflicts or DMA errors. RAM incompatibility is still a source of "fun" but that has always been annoying rather than interesting.
Sure, we can focus on actually Getting Things Done now, but so can everyone else. Being a hardware geek is not as special anymore. Of course the complexity and flakiness of software will keep us well-rounded geeks well entertained (and employed) for quite a while to come. :)