discussion Plextor M6s 256GB SSD Review

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SATA 2 Performance

SATA 2 Performance

In a perfect world everyone investing in a new solid state drive would have access to a SATA 6GB/s controller which could pass on the TRIM command. In reality not everyone has this and for many the decision comes down either giving up TRIM – never a good idea with most controllers – and running it off a secondary controller; or taking a performance hit and running in SATA 2.0 mode.

These tests will consist of some of our real world and synthetic benchmarks run on our standard 1155 test-bed; but the drive will be attached to an SATA 2 port.

For synthetic we have opted for the newcomer to our charts: Anvil Storage Utilities Pro. For real world we have opted for our Adobe test. These two tests should give you a very good idea of the level of performance impact you can expect from running a modern SATA 6 drive in compatibility mode.

While there is a drop in overall performance here, anyone using this drive in an older rig will be delighted with what their rather mediocre investment has brought them.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

Plextor’s M6S is one of those drives that we just want to like but it may have difficulty reaching headline-making status due to its relatively meager aspirations. Everyone pays plenty of attention to flagship SSDs and if surveys are any indication, consumers typically base their purchasing decision of lower-end drives off of the capabilities of higher end alternatives. This causes a bit of a problem for Plextor since the M6S and its siblings haven’t received a whole lot of attention but they’re perfectly able to satisfy the needs of their respective markets.

In many ways the M6S is perfectly suited for entry-level buyers who can’t justify spending a fortune on a low capacity SSD. For them, speed and capacity have to be finely balanced to create a drive that still has an added value incentive but also grants them performance that a typical HDD just can’t hope to match. This is exactly what the M6S has achieved; it’s fast enough to significantly speed up everyday tasks and it won’t break the bank.

For those of us who look at SSD’s through enthusiast-colored glasses, the M6S trails in the charts by a sometimes-wide margin. However, in real world usage scenarios without the benefit of synthetic benchmark numbers, you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between it and an SSD that costs nearly $100 more.

The M6S’s main competition will likely come from other Marvell-based drives. This where things get a bit murky for Plextor’s value-oriented darling since the Marvell 9189 and Micron ONFi 3 NAND combination veritably 'own' the budget end of the SSD marketplace these days. It is just basic economy of scale that 16nm ONFi 3 NAND is less expensive to produce than the 19nm Toggle Mode NAND that the M6S uses. The end result of this is quite telling: for only $50 more, consumers can get a Crucial MX100 512GB drive instead of a Plextor M6S 256GB. An extra 256GB of capacity and higher performance for just fifty dollars is awfully tempting.

Thankfully all is not lost for the M6S 256GB in the grand scheme of things it’s rather well placed. On paper at least, the MX100 256GB isn’t quite able to keep up while the M550 256GB (the only smaller ONFi 3 based drive with 4-way interleaving in our charts) costs more than the M6S 256GB and barely remains ahead. This makes Plextor SSD a great choice for consumers with a hard budget of only $150, where it offers a whole lot of performance and more than a good amount of value. However, don't discount OCZ's new ARC 100 from this equation either.