Plextor M6V SSD review: Fast performance at a low cost
Plextor's latest M6V solid-state drive might just be the deal you've been waiting for to upgrade your hard drive-based computer.
Plextor's new M6V solid-state drive (SSD) is, according to the company, a lower-tier product compared to its older sibling, the M6S. However, the new SSD turns out to be superior both in terms of performance and cost.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Among budget SSDs, the new M6V is one of the fastest I've tested and carries a suggested price of just $66 (£34.51), $100 (£57.52) and $190 for 128GB, 256GB and 512GB (not available in the UK) capacities, respectively. (Pricing for Australia will be announced at a later time.) As with all SSDs, you can expect the actual street price to be even lower.
On the downside, the M6V doesn't include any software or accessories, such as a drive-cloning application or a bracket to better fit inside a desktop computer. What's more, its 3-year warranty is short, albeit standard for an SSD of its tier.
All things considered, if you have a computer that runs on a traditional hard drive, the M6V is an upgrade that's totally worth the investment. For more options on excellent SSDs, check out this list of the top SSDs on the market.
Design
The M6V is a standard internal SSD, with the same 2.5-inch design usually reserved only for laptop hard drives. This drive, however, can be used wherever you'd normally use a standard SATA hard drive, either in a desktop or laptop. It supports the latest SATA 3 (6 Gbps) and will also work with SATA 2 and SATA.
At 7mm thick, the M6V will fit inside most notebooks easily. If you have desktop computer, however, it might be tricky since the drive doesn't include an adapter bracket to increase its physical size to that of a 3.5-inch (desktop) hard drive. This is not a big deal, though, since with no moving parts an SSD can be left loose inside the computer, or you can get a bracket of your own for a few dollars at the store. The drive doesn't include drive-cloning software, either, so you will need to get that on your own. The good news is there are many free options for this, including my personal favorite, Macrium Reflect.
The M6V doesn't support encryption, which is a common shortcoming of budget SSDs. However, encryption, which protects data in case of theft or loss, is only needed in a corporate or business environment and only works with motherboards that also have this feature. Most home computers don't support hardware encryption of this type at all.
Features
The Plextor M6V has one major unique feature called PlexTurbo 3.0. This is smart-caching technology for Plextor's SSDs that delivers a performance boost by automatically detecting both frequently accessed and less frequently accessed data and organizing it in an optimal way for read and write operations.
The M6V's PlexTurbo 3.0 uses up to 1GB of its storage space for caching. It then saves the latest used data and then preloads it into the cache area when you reboot the computer, allowing the machine to boot and perform frequent tasks faster. On top of that, if you combine two or more M6V units in a RAID setup, PlexTurbo 3.0 supports cache-sharing among these drives. This means, depending on the type of RAID configurations, the effect of PlexTurbo 3.0 can be enhanced even further.
Plextor M6V SSD's specs
128GB | 256GB | 512GB | |
---|---|---|---|
Design | 2.5-inch, 7mm | 2.5-inch, 7mm | 2.5-inch, 7mm |
Interface | SATA3, SATA2, SATA | SATA3, SATA2, SATA | SATA3, SATA2, SATA |
Controller | Silicon Motion SMI-2246 | Silicon Motion SMI-2246 | Silicon Motion SMI-2246 |
NAND | Toshiba A15nm MLC | Toshiba A15nm MLC | Toshiba A15nm MLC |
Included Cache | 256MB | 256MB | 512MB |
Sequential Read | 535 MB/s | 535 MB/s | 535 MB/s |
Sequential Write | 170 MB/s | 335 MB/s | 455 MB/s |
Random Read IOPS | 81K | 83K | 83K |
Random Write IOPS | 42K | 80K | 80K |
Endurance (total data written) | 73TB | 73TB | 73TB |
Power requirement | 5V 1.0A | 5V 1.0A | 5V 1.0A |
Suggested US retail price | $66 | $100 | $190 |
Warranty | 3-year | 3-year | 3-year |
Pricing
The Plextor M6V is one of the most competitively priced SSDs on the market. At launch it carries the suggested price of just $100, and $190 for 256GB and 512GB, respectively, effectively costing less than $0.40 per gigabyte -- and it's highly likely that within a month its street price will be even lower.
Performance
Plextor markets the M6V as a "value drive" that "may not be the fastest on the market" and this turned out to be true in my testing. The drive indeed didn't top the charts. However, among budget drives I've reviewed, it's the fastest and in some tests, its scores were even close to those of much more expensive higher-tier SSDs.
In sequential tests, as a second drive performing only writing or reading, the M6V scored 229MBps for writing, about average on the charge. For reading, however, it did much better at 326MBps, well above the average. When working as a host drive and performing both writing and reading at the same time, the M6V scored 185MBps, also well above the average and faster than all other budget drives I've seen. The recently reviewed and similarly-priced OCZ Trion 100, for example, scored just 124MBps in this test.
For random access, I used the PC Mark 8 benchmark suite to test the M6V and it also did very well. The drive has the storage score of 4957 and the 245.57MB/s, both significantly higher than most of its peers.
A similar thing happened with PC Mark 8 for applications; the M6V consistently proved itself to be faster than most drives of its tier. It's important to note, however, the differences between SSDs in application performance are minimal: a few fractions of a second up to a few seconds. Generally, the gap is only significant between an SSD and a traditional hard drive.
Conclusion
The Plextor is the new high in low-cost solid-state storage. The new drive delivers excellent performance while keeping the cost low. Keep in mind though, the drive comes in a spartan package with a short 3-year warranty.
For SSDs, the warranty time the second most important factor, after performance. It gives you the peace of mind in case something happens to the drive. However, drives with more features and longer warranties tend to cost more. The Samsung SSD 850 Evo, for example, has a 5-year warranty and at launch was priced much higher than the Plextor (currently, after 10 months on the market still costs a few cents per gigabyte more on average). Other higher-end drives that have a 10-year warranty, such as the Samsung SSD 850 Pro, or theSanDisk Extreme Pro cost even more.
That said, if you're in the market for a cheap replacement drive to upgrade your hard drive-based computer, the Plextor M6V is definitely a good buy.