Plextor M3 Pro 128GB (PX-128M3P): Review & Specs

At the dawn of the era of optical drives, the company name Plextor for many users firmly associated with the devices of standard quality. They continue to produce drive, but after a significant decline and the interest and demand for these devices, as well as the manufacturer try his hand in other ways. One of them is SSD. Plextor Solid state drives appeared in the range back in 2010, and during that time has already gone through several generations of these devices. Today, we believe the possibility of the current model in a line of Plextor M3 Pro 128GB SSD.

Plextor M3 Pro 128GB

The production process is relatively simple in solid-state drives. There are no complicated manufacturing process steps. But the point, as usual, in the details. To get a decent output device, not soldered to the board controller and memory chips. The most important component of any SSD – flash is used. Microcode can dramatically affect the performance results of the drive manufacturers because there is work to do.

Describing the design of the device, it is easy to keep within a couple of suggestions. Like other SSD, the model considered is a small bar form factor 2.5″. However, the devices belonging to the series Plextor M3 Pro 128GB SSD, have a thickness of only 7 mm housing.

In this case the body of Plextor PX-128M3P made of aluminium, while it is not anodized, with natural silver color. The outer surface of ground, on the planes is easily visible characteristic vertical texture.

Heart of this Drive is Controller Marvell 88SS9174-BLD2. The same chip is a disk-based Crucial M4.

Declared linear read speed – 535 MB / c, recording – 350 MB / c, while working with a 4 KB block drive performance can reach 75000/69000 IOPS (read / write). For PX-128M3P used synchronous high-speed memory from Toshiba Toggle-Mode, manufactured using the 24-nanometer technology. 128-gigabyte model is equipped with 256 MB of cache memory DDR3, while models 256 and 512 GB at their disposal cache of 512 MB.

Drive supports SMART, and TRIM command function and Garbage Collection, allowing clearing the memory, which does not contain useful information.

Trim

Included with the drive is supplied aluminium plate adapter to install the drive into a standard 3.5″ bay, as well as a set of necessary screws. In addition, there is a guide for installation and connection, disk utility for cloning and backup Acronis True Image HD.
Performance

For clarity and a more comfortable drive performance evaluation of Plextor, we compared the results with those for disk ADATA S511 120GB – a typical representative of the cohort of devices with the popular controller SandForce SF-2281.
The speed of the drives on the SandForce SF-2281 is highly dependent on the nature of the data, in particular on the extent of the possible compression. If they are not easily compressed, the disk performance is markedly reduced, in particular this applies to the speed recording. This explains the relatively low performance of the linear recording drives from ADATA. The results demonstrated the drive from Plextor only slightly fall short of the stated. Note that for the Plextor M3 Pro 128GB linear writing speed of 300 MB / c – this is a very good result. Often such figures can boast a higher capacity model with a larger number of channels.

 

As the degree of data compression, drive performance increases. When working with data that are well compressed controller, the write speed on SandForce drives is very high, but if the transmitted data is not compressed, the write speed is reduced significantly. U disk controller from Marvell do not have such features. Regardless of the type of data it provides a stable data rate.

 

Access time ADATA shows typical performance solid state disk, while a drive from Plextor – has excellent results.
Benchmarks that Anvil’s Storage Utilities can make measurements with different performance profile as well, and the utility provides the ability to simulate the compression of data. In a test, it was conducted measurements in boundary mode, when data is compressed very well (0-Fill) or not exposed to compression (100%, incompressible), and in conditions close to the work of the typical application software (46%, Applications). Results are expected for the two devices involved in the test. Drive on SandForce SF-2281 seriously improves with the increase of data compression, whereas indicators Plextor M3 Pro 128GB are practically independent of the conditions of use.

 

Subtest storage of a set of PCMark 7 also preferred device for Marvell, but the minimum difference of final results – a clear demonstration of the fact that in applications, and realistic scenarios using SSD on the PC, the possibilities of modern high-speed SSD models do not differ so drastically.
Overall Plextor M3 Pro 128GB (PX-128M3P) leaves a very good impression. The drive provides consistent high performance results without unpleasant surprises. In our opinion, this is one of the best models on the market, equipped with a controller from Marvell. We note that the figures correspond to a series of drives Plextor M3 Pro SSD. Now on sale are also available line drives Plextor M3 Pro 128GB, which are made in the form factor and built on an identical platform, but according to all appearances, different firmware, because they have much less than the stated speed record (for models with 128 GB is 350 GB M3 Pro and 210 MB / c for M3).

The manufacturer provides a five-year warranty on their drives Pro-series, but the warranty period devices offered in our retail, may depend on the provider, because it needs to be specified in each individual case.

Results

Plextor M3 Pro 128GB (PX-128M3P) – SSD with thinner body and comes with very good speed. Proven controller from Marvell firmware and quality providing a stable and predictable performance. At the same speed, performance is practically relevant application. 7-mm shell allows you to use the drive in an ultraportable notebook with an appropriate seat however it has no contraindications for use in mobile computing form factor or desktops. Cost of drives Plextor M3 Pro Series is slightly higher than ordinary models. For example, a classic drive from Plextor M3 series of similar capacity would cost $ 30-40 cheaper. Alas, such is the fee for compact devices and advanced firmware greatly improves the speed record.

Pros:

+ Great performance

+ High transfers regardless of the degree of data compression

+ Stylish aluminium body, 7 mm thick

+ Adapter for mounting in 3.5″ bay

+ Warranty – 5 years

Cons:

– Price

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