Price: $269
Marvell is making a bit of a comeback in
the SSD world. Manufacturer of the controllers that make SSDs tick, it feel out
of fashion a couple of years ago when SandForce took the top spot. However,
drives like the M5 Pro Xtreme show that Marvell has learned its lessons and is
well on the road to recovery.
Plextor
M5 Pro Xtreme 256GB
Marvell’s attractively-titled 88SS9187
controller pairs up with Toshiba’s cutting edge 19nm memory modules. Eight 16GB
modules make for a total storage of 256GB. However, actual storage space is
238GB, as some of the memory is set aside for garbage collection and other
assorted SSD sorcery. That works out to $1.13 per Gigabyte, but he price we’re
using is RRP. Expect the street price to be even more affordable once stock
hits stores.
Plextor
M5 Pro Xtreme 256GB
Given the affordable price tag, we expected
mid to high range performance in Anvil’s Storage Utilities benchmark, so we
were impressed with the excellent read speed results. The drive smashed the
competition in smaller file write tests, even doubling the OCZ Vector in one,
but then slightly lagging behind as the file size increased to 128k. Write
performance wasn’t quite as impressive, trailing behind the Vector by anywhere
between 5% and 25%. Next up was FutureMark’s PCMark Vantage HDD Suite, and the
M5 Pro came out on top of the pack.
Plextor
has shot straight to the top of the pack with this fantastic SSD.
Plextor has created a very capable drive in
the M5 Pro Xtreme, largely thanks to it being one of the first armed with the
new 19nm memory as well as the Marvell controller. It’s likely that others will
follow suit, but until then this is one of the fastest SSDs on the market.
·
Nice price
·
Excellent performance
·
Great software suite included
·
Five year warranty
·
NONE! Really, we mean it!
Verdict: 10/10
Plextor has shot straight to the top of the
pack with this fantastic SSD.
