Plextor M6 PRO 256GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

The Plextor M6 PRO 256GB isn’t a budget drive but rather a solid performance drive. Yet it won’t blow your wallet either, being priced at a very competitive £115,19 incl VAT. Considering the accessory package that is included and the added value of the Plextools, not to mention the PlexTurbo technology alone, I’d actual call this drive very cheap. Taking the mentioned turbo function into consideration, then there is no match, not even close.

Overview

I don’t think there is any doubt by now that I like this drive and how it performs. We’ve seen some great figures in all the benchmarks and Plextor kept up their promises on this drive. It performed flawless no matter how full it was and the wear and tear didn’t seem to bother it either, the drive actually got slightly faster over time. The Toshiba A19 nm NAND flash paired with the newest multi-core Marvel controller works great. Internal bottlenecks are prevented with the extra amount of cache memory the drive has compared.

I’ve heard some talk that Plextor is working on a new Firmware for it, to tune it’s performance even better. It already lives up to the rated specifications, but guess the folks at Plextor weren’t happy enough. This is just another bonus for any customer of this drive. And updating the firmware is a piece of cake with the Plextool software that is included, that also supports health checks, benchmarking and enabling the PlexTurbo function.

The exclusive Plextor technologies used on this drive are really what sets it apart from the rest. The PlexTurbo caching technology is brilliant and works really well giving performance boosts up to 10 times that of the SATA3 bus. It’s a completely new technology from plextor, so I’m sure we’ll see some great improvement over time in that as well. Another really great feature is the DEVSLP that allows the drive to enter a deep sleep state, where it only consumes the tiniest amount of power. Something that is great for any notebook user, every minute on the battery is a win.

The 256-bit AES encryption for the entire drive is another nice thing to see, special when coupled with the zero-data-loss on power-loss made possible by the TrueProtect technology.

I think this is a drive that truly can bring Plextor back into the spotlight. The have never really left it, they’ve just been pushed a bit to the side by new contesters. A beautiful drive worthy of the Plextor name and one I’d like to award the innovation award for going beyond the limitations of the SATA3 bus. Something unique out-of-the-box, specially on the consumer level.

Pros:

• Very steady and reliable performance
• no noticeable degradation from usage, some tests actually showed improvements
• PlexTurbo and TrueSpeed technologies to boost the speeds to just that extra no one else has
• Long 5-year warranty and 2.4 million hours MTBF
• Power saving features

Cons:

• none

“The Plextor M6 PRO 256GB Solid State Drive is one of the best I’ve had on my bench, despite the relative low costs. The included Plextools and cloning software increases the value further and the turbo features sets it apart from anything else. Highly recommended”

Thanks to Plextor for providing this review sample.