Plextor M5S 256GB Review
by Kristian Vättö on July 18, 2012 3:00 AM ESTPerformance Over Time & TRIM
Plextor's M3 and M3 Pro performed well in our torture testing. After 20 minutes of torture their performance was still bearable, which is what matters for consumer workloads (although even that is very extreme). Plextor relies on idle time garbage collection, so the performance restores when the drive is doing nothing. Plextor has always promoted their "True Speed" technology and I can see why. In fact, dirty state performance is one of the key features of the M5S as shown on Plextor's website.
I was excited to see if M5S brought even better garbage colletion as Plextor is advertising it so heavily. To begin testing, I ran HD Tach on a secure erased drive to get the baseline performance:
Next I tortured the drive by filling it with sequential data and then exposed it to 20 minutes of 4KB random writes (QD=32, LBA 100%):
Write performance drops to as low as 50MB/s for the first LBAs but the average write speed is up by 10MB/s compared to the M3.
I let the drive sit idle for 30 minutes and reran HD Tach:
Performance is over 90% of clean state performance, which is very good. With more idle time and sequential writes, performance shhould get even closer to clean state numbers.
Since 20 minutes of torture is not enough to put the M5S in its worst possible state, I secure erased the drive, filled it with sequential data and ran our torture test for 60 minutes:
And performance drops significantly as expected.
I again let the drive idle for 30 minutes and reran HD Tach after that:
This is pleasant news. The M5S came from worst state to over 70% of clean state performance in only 30 minutes. For comparison, the M3 Pro only restored to 46% of clean state performance and it was idling for nearly two hours.
Finally, I secure erased the drive one more time, filled it with sequential data and tortured for 60 minutes. After that, I formatted the drive in Disk Management to see if TRIM works properly (and it does):
Write Amplification
Write amplification has been reduced dramatically. The M3 Pro had relatively high worst case write amplification, although it was still acceptable. The M5S takes write amplification down to the level of most other non-SandForce drives.
Conclusion
I'm pleased that Plextor has paid extra attention to the garbage collection in the M5S. The garbage collection in the M3 and M3 Pro was already good, but not perfect. The garbage collection in M5S is very aggressive if the drive is put into an extremely dirty state, which is good news because the most noticeable difference in performance comes when the drive is at its worst state.
I'm even happier about the fact that better garbage collection did not come at the expense of write amplification. In fact, the M5S almost halved estimated worst case write amplification compared to the M3 Pro. Aggressive garbage collection can come with serious downsides if not applied correctly. Plextor's approach has improved both garbage collection and write amplification, which is the optimal way when looking at the big picture.
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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.