Plextor M5S 256GB SATA 3 SSD Review – True Speed Through and Through

Our SSD report today will be a detailed analysis of the Plextor M5S 256GB SATA 3 SSD, a drive that was officially unveiled by Plextor only yesterday.

This report is a bit special as Plextor contacted us several weeks back and asked if we might enjoy first crack at this SSD, promising to let them know if it was anything less than they believed it would be.  We were definitely more than happy to oblige just as we are giving the world a first look at the M5S, a drive that we think may impress you.

Plextor prides themselves in the direction they are taking with SSDs.  Not only are they introducing the M5S with exclusive firmware, but also, they are proud to speak of their “True Speed’ technology which enhances the performance of the drive and retains that performance throughout the life of the drive.

The M5S is available in capacities of 64, 128 and 256GB, of which the DRAM cache increases which size and a three year warranty is included.  Performance is listed at 520MB/s read for all capacities and write performance is 90MB/s for the 64GB, 200MB/s for the 128GB and 390MB/s for the 256GB we are reviewing, an SSD that will also perform at the 70,000 mark for both 4k read and write IOPS. It is not available in stores just yet but MSRP is expected to be $99, $159 and $299.

M5S COMPONENTS

The PCB of the M5S is protected by a brushed silver metal case that is secured by two screws on each side of the SSD, one of course being covered with a security seal that will void your warranty if damaged.  Plextor is one of the few to stay true to the Marvell name and the heart and soul of this SSD is the Marvell 88SS9174 controller.

There are also two Nanya DRAM cache modules just above the controller along with eight modules of Micron 25nm synchronous NAND flash memory (29F128G08CFAAB) on each side of the SSD. This totals 256GB of RAW capacity, however once formatted, total user capacity is reduced to 238GB.