Comments Locked

30 Comments

Back to Article

  • prime2515103 - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    I find it disappointing how average Plextor has become, yet they keep their pricing at a point where one might expect to get something at least slightly exceptional.

    I do have an M5M in my laptop and haven't had any problems with it, so I'll give them that. The selection of mSATA drives was pretty sparse when I bought it though, and it was on sale for $108 (which was quite good at the time), otherwise it definitely would not have been my first choice.
  • Cellar Door - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    I agree, I will be going with samsung evo for my msata drive. Very disappointing for the price.
  • Samus - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    M500 is still the best deal for an average, reliable SSD. Great for basic business and family PC's.
  • rufuselder - Thursday, October 9, 2014 - link

    Me too. But either way, there are some much better storage options out there. /Rufus from http://www.consumertop.com/best-computer-storage-g...
  • dylan522p - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    That was good basic explanation of the differences between everyones NAND! Thanks for doing that.
  • nathanddrews - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    The pictures of the IMFT and Samsung processes are all clean and uniform... the Toshiba and Hynix processes look like a 3-year-old with a crayon made them.
  • zodiacsoulmate - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    yea... why they look like that? maybe they are hard to color? why they look so random...
  • extide - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    LOL, I noticed that too, it's like, geez how does that stuff even work! Looks so sloppy!
  • Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link

    Keep in mind that the diameter of the photo is a few dozen nanometers and it's extremely hard to achieve 100% precision with lithographies that small. At least IMFT has been using air gaps before and it's a mature process for them but Toshiba and Hynix added them to the current generation, making it quite new for them.
  • creed3020 - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    Kristian thanks for such an in-depth technical and product review. I really appreciate how in your reviews graphs are accompanied with text explaining the results and providing an opinion on the results. I can read a graph but interpretation of those graphs and data trends is often missing from reviews here at AT.

    I am surprised that such a new drive isn't also available in M2 format but I guess they have the M6e for that. Is there a review of that drive coming as well?
  • Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link

    Yes, there will be a review of the M6e. There has been some issues with testing and hence it's taking this long but it'll be my first priority as soon as we are able to overcome the issues.
  • n3cw4rr10r - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    The prices for SSDs are still high imo. I am surprised they are still holding @ approx $1/gb in most cases.
  • philipma1957 - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    samsung evo is far below $1 a gb and crucial M550's are far below $1 a gb
  • ssj3gohan - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    Finally actual proper idle power consumption results! It only took you a bit more than 5 years!

    HIPM and DIPM have been supported on all desktop systems - all desktop OSes as well as all hardware platforms - since the Athlon 64 X2 and first generation Core 2 (i945 chipset) times. I have been measuring SSD power consumption since they first came out - and yes, ever since the first SSDs, most of them supported the full gamut of power management - and have always been baffled that no review site on the internet has ever published accurate idle power consumption data. You are - aside from a few blogs I have come across - the first one. Congratulations!

    Now, it's true that the first instances of especially DIPM were frought with latency issues and for a long time DIPM was turned off by default on Linux kernels (although Windows always forces it on in anything but the 'performance' power profile since Vista). Also, and this is probably the biggest issue, lots of BIOSes do not properly report SATA LPM or have it off by default. As it is usually fairly well hidden away it is not something many people think to turn on.

    SATA ALPM is not at all a mobile feature. It has never been. Since support was baked in it has always been available to both laptop and desktop users. And with SSDs spending >>99% in idle, it represents easy and harmless power savings both in the SSD as well as the SATA I/O on the motherboard.
  • zodiacsoulmate - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    wow nice info!
  • chubbypanda - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link

    That's right. I always wondered why SSD reviewers at AnandTech claim it's mobile only. It's available at least on Denlow platform for sure.

    By the way, HIPM/DIPM feature itself is easy to control in Windows with simple registry update:
    https://communities.intel.com/message/225489
  • Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link

    "Also, and this is probably the biggest issue, lots of BIOSes do not properly report SATA LPM or have it off by default."

    That is the issue I had previously. The motherboard in my old testbed doesn't have the option to enable link power management and hence I couldn't perform those tests.
  • Ethos Evoss - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    Don't understand your tests ...
    It is all bollocks.. so few months back M5M was best and now it is on bottom ? that is all BULLCRAP
  • DanNeely - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    The M5M was reviewed a year ago. It's performance was underwhelming compared to sata drives then; but at the time getting an mSata drive at retail was much easier said than done; and at the time it was still a reasonable buy for its money. Since then much better mSata drives have came out and Plextor is trying to charge a premium device price while providing performance much worse than that of competing products that are significantly cheaper.

    http://anandtech.com/show/6722/plextor-m5m-256gb-m...
  • Ethos Evoss - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    Then M6M is NOT big step from M5M .. I have 2x M5M 256GB and they flies
    I am not replacing then .. not worth ..
  • nick2crete - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    Christian ,
    the Crucial M550 has the Marvell 9189 controller ,so what are the differences from 9187,9188 and 9189
  • Kristian Vättö - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link

    9189 is an updated version of the 9187 with full DevSleep and LPDDR support.

    9188 is a light version of the 9187 with four channels instead of eight.
  • nick2crete - Friday, April 11, 2014 - link

    Thank you !

    maybe you should correct it in the review ,because as it is written is meant that the M550 has the 9187 or you meant the M500 probably ..
  • HisDivineOrder - Thursday, April 10, 2014 - link

    The main reason to release a derivative product is because "the other guys" are releasing new products and you don't want to seem behind.

    AKA AMD re-releasing the 7xxx series as R9 parts with new branding and new "newness." nVidia, Intel, they all do it. In fact, Intel's about to do it again.
  • payton2037 - Sunday, April 13, 2014 - link

    Start a Second Income™with the company that's first with Internet entrepreneurs!
    For more Details Please visit at :--
    http://www.sfi4.com/14161637/FREE
  • watersb - Monday, April 14, 2014 - link

    Fantastic overview of NAND drive internals. Bundle this up as an Amazon Single for $1.99 and take my money.
  • AbRASiON - Wednesday, April 16, 2014 - link

    Would I be right in assuming when the author writes "manufacturers are preparing for the PCI-e era" regarding SSD storage, we're looking at that NGFF or whatever it is, next gen mSATA port? I mean surely they don't expect us to blow a PCI-e port on storage? (I would if it was worth it, most wouldn't)
  • Antronman - Monday, April 21, 2014 - link

    PCIe storage already exists at the consumer level...
    Extremely expensive, 1.4TB Read 700MB Write PCIe SSDs.
    420GB, 1500USD.
  • Ultraspark - Thursday, April 24, 2014 - link

    On Amazon Plextor m5p 128gb cost about 117$, and not 200$. I wonder how did you found such price. Or on newegg prices are updated once per 2 year, or this is an cheap review "paid" by someone to put Plextor in a bad light. It is well known that the controller+memory tandem is a half job. The firmware do the other half of job. You'll never feel in real life few tens of Mbps or few thousands of IOPS. The main goal of plextor is reliability! Just remember the Sandforce devices with shitty firmware who die like no one else. The MxS series is a preparation for MxP series. Remember the new revision of M5S. It is almost M5P with very small difference, without a chance to feel that difference in real life. Just different firmware and case. So, let's be honest dear reviwer: a good car is just a half job. If you want to win you need a good driver. The same is with plextor. This is 1st firmware. It is just to work. The future firmwares will do the magic, like on M5 Series. And When you search for price, be honest to search for lowest, not for highest. Please correct from 200$ to 117$
  • Ultraspark - Thursday, April 24, 2014 - link

    Or change the supplier. I never buy from newegg.

Log in

Don't have an account? Sign up now