Plextor PX-M3 review: Plextor PX-M3
The Plextor M3 looks exactly the same as the previous model the M2. The new drive also supports SATA 3 but it’s now a lot more affordable, costing just around $1.40 per gigabyte, compared with the $1.80 of the previous model.
The only explanation for this is that it’s also now slightly slower than the M2 in my testing, though still very fast, performing on par with many other recent SATA 3-based SSDs. That said, it offers a great boost to any computer that moving to a SSD from a regular hard drive.
If you have a computer that’s using a hard drive as the boot drive, the Plextor M3 makes a good replacement.
Design and features
| Drive type | Internal drive |
| Connector options | SATA 3 (6Gbps), SATA 2, SATA |
| Available capacities | 128GB, 256GB, |
| Product dimensions | 9.5-mm thick, 2.5-inch standard |
| Capacity of test unit | 256GB |
| OSes supported | Windows, Mac, Linux |
Like the M2 and some other SSDS, such as the SanDisk Ultra, the new Plextor M3 comes in an aluminum case, giving it an expensive look and a sturdy feel.
Unlike the recently reviewed Intel 520 series that’s just 7mm thick and can fit in ultrabooks, the M3 is 9.5mm thick. This means it can only fit in standard laptops. The drive also comes with a drive bay adapter so it can replace a standard 3.5-inch desktop hard drive.
In my trials, the Plextor M3 worked with all of the SATA standards, including SATA 3 (6Gbps), SATA 2 (3Gbps), and SATA (1.5Gbps). You will want to use it with a computer that supports at least SATA 2, which most computers do, or SATA 3 if you want to get the most out of its performance, however.
The Plextor M3 is powered by a Marvell 88SS9174 controller, which supports the TRIM command, features Global Wear Leveling, and has a mean time between failures (MTBF) of 1.5 million hours. The drive doesn’t have overprovisioning, in which part of its storage space is dedicated to the controller. This explains why it offers a full 256GB (or 128GB) instead of 240GB like drives that have overprovisioning.
Cost per gigabyte
Following the SanDisk Extreme, the Plextor M3 also comes with friendly price tags of around $350 for the 256GB capacity and $185 for the 128GB capacity.
This translates into around $1.40 per gigabyte, making them among the most affordable SATA 3-based SSDs on the market. This looks like a new trend in the pricing of SSDs, and hopefully their price will continue to go down. Compared with regular hard drives, though, they’re still a lot more expensive.
Cost per GB
Plextor M2 (256)
$1.73
Plextor M3 (128GB)
$1.45
Plextor M3 (256GB)
$1.36
Seagate Momentus XT (750GB)
$0.23
Performance
With a 13-second boot time, the Plextor M3 totally changed the way the host computer boots up in my test. The machine’s overall performance was also greatly improved. Gamers will be happy to see how fast many of their games load. In my case, StarCraft 2 took just a few seconds to start.
Similar to other recent SATA 3-based SSDs, the Plextor M3 did well, though not the best, in sequential write and read performance, which is basically how fast the drive can copy files.
When used as a secondary drive, where the SanDisk could show its top performance since it only performed the writing, the M3 scored 222 MBps, slightly faster than the OCZ Agility 3 , but noticeably slower than the previous model, the Plextor M2, which scored 261MBps on the same test.
When used as the boot drive that hosted the operating system and performed both writing and reading at the same time, the Plextor M3’s data-transferring performance was reduced to 110MBps, about the average on the chart.
Overall, the M3 performed as I expected. On a side note, while it’s just the middle of the herd among SSDs, it will offer the same experience as any other SSDs for users who move to it from a regular hard drive. This is because SSDs generally are so much faster than traditional hard drives, especially in terms of boot/shutdown/wakeup times and application performance, that the differences between themselves are only noticeable to those who’ve always used SSDs. That said, you should refrain from testing your own SSD since that would effectively use up its program cycles , lowering its lifespan.
Boot and shutdown time (in seconds)
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
| Shutdown | Boot Time |
Plextor M3
7
13
Plextor PX-256M2S
6
13.5
Seagate Momentus XT (2nd Gen)
10.9
14.6
Data transfer (in MB/s)
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
| As Secondary Drive | As OS Drive |
Plextor M3
221.98
110.4
Plextor PX-256M2S
261
162.
03
Seagate Momentus XT (2nd Gen)
80.2
33.96
Service and support
Plextor backs the M3 up with a five-year warranty, two years longer than what it offers for the M2. When it comes to storage devices, the length of the warranty is the most important factor, and in this case Plextor delivers.
Conclusion
Competitively priced, offering very good performance, and backed by a top warranty time, the Plextor M3 makes a great replacement drive for any laptop or desktop computer.
The Plextor M3 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättöon April 5, 2012 3:05 AM EST
- Posted in
- Storage
- SSDs
- Marvell
- Plextor
- M3
113 Comments
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113 Comments
IntroductionPlextor M3 and Test SetupRandom and Sequential Read/Write SpeedAS-SSD Incompressible Sequential PerformanceAnandTech Storage Bench 2011AnandTech Storage Bench 2011 — Light WorkloadPerformance Over Time and TRIMPower ConsumptionFinal Words
Plextor as a brand has been around for quite a while, but most of our long-time readers are likely more familiar with the name as a purveyor of optical drives (especially 8-15 years back when optical drive performance actually mattered).
For our younger audience, the name may be a relative unknown. However, Plextor is not a newcomer in the SSD market or component world in general.
Plextor’s history dates back almost a century as it is a subsidiary of Shinano Kenshi Corporation, which was founded in 1918. The actual Plextor brand was founded in 1990 and Plextor mainly manufactured optical disc drives in the 90s. (For a fun blast from the past, you can still find our old Plextor drive reviews.) Plextor’s product lineup has always been and is still heavily optical drive orientated but in March 2010, Plextor revealed their first SSD lineup: The PX-64M1s and PX-128M1S.
About a year later, Plextor released their second generation SSDs: the M2 Series. It was among the first consumer SATA 6Gb/s drives and was based on Marvell’s 88SS9174-BJP2 controller, which is the same controller used in Crucial RealSSD C300. Plextor is now on its third generation of SSDs and we finally have the chance to take a look at their M3 Series.
Before we go into the actual drive, let’s talk briefly about gaining popularity and generating revenue in the SSD world. There are essentially two ways for an SSD manufacturer to generate revenue. The first is to make a deal with a PC OEM and supply them with SSDs. This is a relatively safe way because OEMs rarely offer more than one or two SSD choices, so if a customer wants an SSD pre-installed, there is a good chance that the drive will be yours. Toshiba’s SSD business model is solely based on OEM sales for example, and having scored a good deal with Apple (they used to be the only supplier of SSDs for Macs, and still ship most of the SSDs used in Macs), they are selling millions of SSDs every year thanks to Apple’s success.
The downside of an OEM partnership is the difficulty of building one. If you look at the SSDs that OEMs offer, they are mostly made by Intel or Samsung. Reliability is far more important for PC OEMs than raw performance figures because when a consumer is buying a computer, he is buying the big picture and not a specific SSD.
Nobody likes failures and it should be one of the OEM’s main goals to build a reliable machine to avoid a stained brand image.
Furthermore, Intel and Samsung are both fab owners and use their own proprietary controllers (except for Intel’s Series 520 SATA 6Gb/s SSDs, but the firmware is still custom). Owning a fab means you have total control over what you produce and sell, and also know what to expect in terms of yields. If there is a problem in production, you can focus the available NAND on your own SSD products and ship the leftovers to others. That guarantees a fairly stable supply of SSDs, while fab-less SSD makers are at the mercy of NAND manufacturers and their supply can fluctuate a lot.
Using custom firmware, and especially an in-house controller, removes additional overhead that is produced by a third party controller and firmware. If you go with a drive that uses a third party controller and firmware, when an issue arises you first report it to the manufacturer of the drive, who then reports it to the maker of the controller and/or firmware, and then there’s a delay while you wait for the problem to be fixed.
SandForce in particularly cannot be praised for the quickness of their firmware updates in the past, and hence it’s a safer bet for PC OEMs to go with a manufacturer who also designs the firmware as it’s easier to work out potential issues that might crop up.
If you can’t establish a relationship with a PC OEM, then you are left with selling SSDs through retailers. This is what most SSD OEMs do and some do it along with OEM sales. The retail market greatly differs from the OEM market. Your SSD is no longer part of the whole product—it is the whole product. That means your SSD has to sell itself. The best way is obviously to have a high performance yet reasonably priced SSD, as that is what buyers will see when buying a product. Reliability is another big concern but it’s something you can’t really use as a marketing tool because there aren’t any extensive, unbiased studies.
The positive side is that if you have an SSD that is very competitive, it will also sell. In the OEM market, you may not get a lot sales if the end-product isn’t competitive.
Take for example the Razer Blade that we just reviewed. It uses Plextor’s M2 SSD (see why I picked the Blade now? Note however that our review sample was an earlier unit that used a Lite-On SSD) but as we mentioned in our review, the Blade is too expensive for what you get. Plextor will of course get some SSD sales through Razer but due to the small niche of the Blade, it’s not a gold mine.
As far as brand awareness for Plextor, I believe the reason for their relative obscurity of late has been the lack of media awareness and contacts. Their journey to become an SSD manufacturer has been rather abnormal. When you think of the history of other SSD manufacturers, they were mostly known for RAM before entering the SSD world. Being in the RAM market acts as a shortcut because you are likely to have relations with the media that are interested in your products, plus there is a good chance that people are already familiar with your brand. For optical drive manufacturers, the case is the opposite.
These days, optical drives aren’t tested and benchmarked as much as other components; it’s not a component where people pay a lot attention when building a computer. When most people don’t really care what you are making, it’s tough to create media contacts and build brand image. Coming up with a new product line won’t solve the problem overnight but give it some time and it may. This is essentially what has happened to Plextor—it has taken a few generations of SSDs before consumers and media started recognizing the new player in the game—and now it’s time for us to take a look at what they have been holding in their sleeves.
Plextor M3 and Test Setup
IntroductionPlextor M3 and Test SetupRandom and Sequential Read/Write SpeedAS-SSD Incompressible Sequential PerformanceAnandTech Storage Bench 2011AnandTech Storage Bench 2011 — Light WorkloadPerformance Over Time and TRIMPower ConsumptionFinal Words
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Review and test Plextor M3 Pro 256 Gb (PX-256M3P) — i2HARD
Evgeny Serov
September 4, 2013
Not so long ago, old drives appeared in our test lab, which have already gone out of production, but are still in use by many users — Plextor M3 Pro and Plextor M3.
Both…
Not so long ago, old drives appeared in our test lab, which have already gone out of production, but are still in use by many users — Plextor M3 Pro and Plextor M3 . Both drives have a capacity of 256 gigabytes. First of all, we will talk about the Pro version, because today it is more common than Plextor M3 . At one time, the Plextor M3 Pro was considered one of the best drives in its class. It has won numerous offline and online awards. Specifications:
| Model Number | PX-128M3P | PX-256M3P | PX-512M3P |
| Capacity | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB |
| Form Factor | 2. 5″ Standard |
||
| Dimensions (W x L x H) | 69.85mm x 100mm x 7mm | ||
| Interface | Serial ATA 6.0Gb/s, Compatible with SATA 3.0Gb/s and 1.5Gb/s | ||
| Seq. | up to535 MB/s* | ||
| Seq. Write Speed(SATA 6Gb/s) | up to 350MB/s * | up to 420 MB/s * | up to 450 MB/s * |
| Ran. Read Speed (IOPS 4K with QD=32) | Up to 75,000 | Up to 75,000 | Up to 56,000 |
| Ran. Write Speed (IPS 4K with QD = 32) | Up TO 69,000 | UP TO 68,000 | UP TO 34,000 |
| DRAM CACHE | 512MB DDR3 | 512MB DDR3 | |
| Controller | Marvell 88SS9174 Flash controller | ||
| Power ECC | 48bit per 2KB | ||
| Wear Leveling | Global Wear Leveling | ||
S. M.A.R.T. |
SUPPORT | ||
| Password Protection | SUPPORT | NCQ COMMAND | Support |
| TRIMAND 9002 SUPPORT | |||
The Pro version is equipped with a rich package: 
All of them are located at the top of the board, and a little lower there are two DDR3-1333 NANYA NT5CB128M16BP-CG buffer memory chips of 128 megabytes each. nine0003 
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Its debut on the solid state drive market took place in 2010, since then several generations of devices have been released: M1, M2, M2P, M3 and M3 Pro. The M1 line was not widely used, the M2P was released in a limited edition and aimed at the Japanese market, so the main characters of this review are the three remaining models. nine0003 
08. The information in the S.M.A.R.T and the worn sticker hint that the test specimen has already seen the world. 
The controller remains the same, but the firmware has changed significantly: TrueSpeed technology has appeared, which prevents the SSD from going into a “dirty” state; the SSD is supposed to always work «like new». nine0003 
Now its thickness is 7 mm, which ensures compatibility with newfangled ultrabooks. The hardware specs are the same as the M3 (Marvell 88SS9174 controller and 24nm flash from Toshiba), but further firmware improvements have increased performance even further. nine0003 