Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD review - Article

In this article we test, benchmark and review the Plextor M5M 256GB mSATA SSD. The mini-me version of the SSD was developed alongside a Marvel controller tied to 256GB of NAND flash memory, and as small as it is, it is amongst the fastest drives we have ever tested. We sure have lots to talk about alright. mSATA SSDs are a technology that has been getting more and more focus from the manufacturers. You can insert these in selected laptop solutions but also some motherboards have an mSATA interface. It's an interesting technology as the product you'll see today is only 5cm in length, yet it still holds 256GB of data and is as fast as an SSD can be!

Plextor has been demonstrating the M5M mSATA SSD already at CEBIT. Looking at the architecture, the M5M is similar to Plextor's M5 Pro. Both SSDs use Marvell's 88SS9187 controller and come with 19nm Toshiba NAND, combined stirred, not shaken by Plextor's own firmware. So really the sole  difference is four NAND packages instead of 8/16, due to mSATA's form factor limitations. Plextor has developed this product alongside a new Marvell controller tied to 256GB of NAND flash memory it is amongst the fastest drives we have ever tested. While stability and safety of your data have become a number one priority for the manufacturers, the technology keeps advancing in a fast pace as it does, the performance numbers a good SSD offers these days are simply breathtaking. 450 to 500 MB/sec on SATA3 is the norm for a single controller based SSD.  Next to that the past year NAND flash memory (the storage memory used inside an SSD) has become much cheaper as well. Prices now roughly settle just under 1 USD per GB. That was two to threefold two years ago. As such SSD technology and NAND storage has gone mainstream. The market is huge, fierce and competitive, but it brought us where we are today... nice volume SSDs at acceptable prices with very fast performance. Not one test system in my lab has a HDD, everything runs on SSD while I receive my big chunks of data from a NAS server here in the office. The benefits are performance, speed, low power consumption and no noise. You can say that I evangelize SSDs, yes Sir... I am a fan.

Plextor launched this new mSATA SSD developed under SKU Plextor M5M / PX-256M5M. Plextor outs this M5M with a Marvell Monet (88SS9187-BLD2) controller tied to high performance 19nm Toshiba Toggle NAND. Plextor submitted the M5M in a 256GB model with seriously impressive specs. The 256GB models have sustained read/write levels of 540 MB/sec and 430 MB/sec respectively. And with 4K random write performance estimated at 80,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second) here to make a sturdy impression alright. Have a peek, after which we'll dive into the technology behind it and obviously we'll present you a nice phat performance overview.

Plextor M5M mSATA SSD with 19nm Toshiba Toggle NAND and the Marvell Monet 88SS9187-BLD2 controller