Plextor M5S 256GB Review
by Kristian Vättö on July 18, 2012 3:00 AM ESTFinal Words
In a nutshell, the M5S performs exactly like the M3. It's not the fastest SSD in the market, but it provides balanced all-around performance. Some SSD manufacturers rely on compromises and only concentrate on certain areas of performance. A prime example is SandForce. It does well as long as you feed the drive with compressible data - once you switch to incompressible data it's a whole different story. Plextor's approach is to provide good performance regardless of the type or size of data, which I think is the best approach.
While the overall performance matches the performance of the M3, there have been some welcome, and unwelcome, changes. The more aggressive garbage collection definitely helps if the drive is used in an OS without open TRIM support (*cough* OS X). However, most buyers will likely be running Windows with TRIM support, so the garbage collection is not a major selling point. Furthermore, the increase in load power consumption is a letdown. Desktop users have nothing to worry about, but for laptop owners it can be a big deal if you have a habit of running on battery most of the time. The power consumption is not awful but it was better in Plextor's previous generation SSDs, thus the disappointment.
| NewEgg Price Comparison (7/16/2012) | ||||
| 64GB | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB | |
| Plextor M5S | $100 (MSRP) | $160 (MSRP) | $300 (MSRP) | N/A |
| Plextor M3 Pro | N/A | $175 | $300 | $680 |
| Plextor M3 | N/A | $130 | $250 | $575 |
| Corsair Performance Series Pro | N/A | $190 | $330 | N/A |
| Crucial m4 | $65 | $115 | $210 | $400 |
| Intel 520 Series | $105 | $150 | $270 | $520 |
| Samsung 830 Series | $85 | $150 | $300 | $720 |
| OCZ Vertex 3 | $100 | $100 | $190 | $530 |
| OCZ Vertex 4 | $100 | $120 | $300 | $700 |
As always, it all boils down to pricing at the end of the day. Plextor's press release says that the M5S will be available mid-July but I couldn't find it at any US resellers yet. Hence all we have is Plextor's suggested retail prices, which I wouldn't give much value. MSRPs tend to be higher than retail prices. A good example is Corsair's Force Series GS that was released a bit over a week ago. Its MSRPs were $190 for 180GB, $240 for 240GB, $350 for 360GB and $490 for 480GB; yet NewEgg was selling the drives for $175, $220, $320 and $450 on the launch day. I would expect the prices of M5S to drop to around the same level as the M3 is currently retailing for in a month or so. SSD prices fluctuate a lot anyway so it's impossible to recommend a drive based on pricing because the situation may be totally different tomorrow.
All in all, Plextor's M5S is a good drive but it doesn't really bring anything new to the market. The M3 has been available since late 2011 and the M5S is basically M3 with a couple changes. However, it's evident that something faster is in the works because why would Plextor dump the faster M3 Pro in favor of M5S. It seems that the limits of Marvell's 88SS9174 controller have already been reached, so it's probable that M5S' big brother will be based on Marvell's 88SS9187 controller. We don't know when that is going to be released, but given Plextor's ability to reach top of the class performance with the older 88SS9174, I'm eagerly looking forward to their "M5 Pro" and the controller not being the bottleneck anymore.
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StevoLincolnite - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
Another reason regarding Newegg reviews is, will all happy users post a review? Disgruntled customers are highly likely going to do so.themossie - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
There's a strong selection bias, but this bias should be similar for all SSDs. If you compare the percentage of (dis)satisfied reviews, it's a useful way to compare different SSDs - as long as you don't take the numbers too seriously on their own.The Plextor M3 256GB and 128GB SSDs rate 88% and 90% five eggs respectively, which is exceptionally high. Compare this with the OCZ Vertex 3 120GB (one of the most popular and highest ranking Sandforce drives) at 35% one and two egg reviews and 62% five eggs.
I won't speak for the statistical significance of any of this (especially with the <100 review sample size for the Plextors) but it looks like very few people regretted buying a Plextor, something I like to hear about any product :-)
Zak - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
I've just ordered 128GB and 256GB M3Pros, so I was a little upset when I saw this review of M5 but then it looks like other than higher price and 30MB/s increase I didn't miss much. But I wonder how fast the M5Pro will be.BTW, I don't believe that the current SSDs are significantly more reliable than hard drives (which is a bummer) so the 5 years warranty was the deciding factor for me. Plus, I was always a fan of Plextor products. Two of my older OCZ SSDs died in their second year, after the warranty was over. So I'm more mindful of warranties when buying stuff these days. The recent trend in lowering hard drive warranties is regrettable.
karasaj - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
Statistically speaking, anything above thirty is actually considered "relevant, fairly reliable information"Granted, that might not be entirely true due to the insane selection bias, but since that's also present on all drives it might not matter.
Zak - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
"I checked NewEgg reviews for Plextor's M3 and M3 Pro and only 4.2% of the reviews (189 user reviews in total) were one or two eggs, which usually indicates a serious problem with the drive." -- or serious problem with the reviewer. For example I've see people giving SSDs poor reviews because they didn't run at the advertised speeds over 500MB/s on their SATA 3.0Gbps interfaces, etc.justaviking - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
And then there are people who get the ratings backwards.How many times have you read a glowing review ("I love my new drive!!!") but it has a rating of 1? Either they thought "1" meant excellent, as in "first place," or they forgot to enter a rating when they did their review.
I've seen that on more than one site. Maybe the online retailers should use "3" as their default value.
Kristian Vättö - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
"or serious problem with the reviewer"I first thought you meant me and was like why the attitude. Took me a while to figure out you mean NewEgg reviewers, not me - or at least that's the way I hope it is :-)
I definitely agree with you though.
TrackSmart - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
I strongly disagree that Newegg reviews "mean squat". For items with similar buyers and *hundreds* of reviews, it quickly becomes clear when there is an unacceptably high failure rate for an SSD. Check out OCZ's Petrol series of SSDs for instance: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8... Or the Vertex 2: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20...Certainly, a bad review (1 - 2 eggs) does not equal failure in a 1:1 relationship, but you can bet that the correlation will be high. And highly statistically significant if there are enough reviews, even with self-selection bias.
Would you really buy one of those OCZ Petrol drives to save $20, despite the preponderance of bad reviews? 72% are 1-2 eggs! That's a correlation.
yyrkoon - Saturday, July 21, 2012 - link
I agree with Kristian on this.Personally, I sometimes take newegg reviews more seriously on products like these. Simply, because Anandtech reviews are controlled, and limited by the amount of items they are given.
However, you also have to be able to ascertain the given reviewers ( on newegg ) understanding of technology. Which thankfully is not too hard. You just need to read. Often, you will find that reviewer have very little understanding of what they are buying, if negative reviews are given. Passed that, ignoring the rating system of a given review, and understanding the product your self is a must,
Sometimes, you will find that a negative review has merit. Then all you have to figure out. Is if the problem is something you can live with or not. Simple.
Nickel020 - Wednesday, July 18, 2012 - link
Thank you very much for reviewing the drive. I only skimmed over the review (will read later), but I noticed that the prices in the table on the last page are completely different than what you get when you click on the links.It would also be nice if you were to include European prices as well, I think geizhals.de is a very good indicator of what drives actually sell for in Europe.