Plextor M8PeG 256GB M.2 NVMe SSD with Heatsink Review

Bohs Hansen / 8 years ago

Final Thoughts

Pricing

At the time of writing, the Plextor M8PeG M.2 2280 256GB NVMe SSD can be yours for $164.99 at NewEgg and £137.50 at Amazon.

Conclusion

The Plextor M8PeG M.2 2280 NVMe SSD is a beautiful little drive that will fit snuggly into your motherboard without the need for any extra cables and other things which makes for a very clean setup – that is of course if your motherboard supports M.2 NVMe drives.

The attached cooler doesn’t just make the drive look great, it also helps it run better and more consistently compared to a drive without. M.2 drives are often placed below or near hot components such as graphics cards and as such a drive like this needs an extra treatment to be up to the tasks in a gaming system. You wouldn’t want thermal throttling during long gaming hours and you won’t get that with the M8PeG thanks to its design.

The 256GB drive isn’t as fast as its bigger brothers with more capacity, but it still performs very well and far better than an SATA-based drive does. It especially outperforms them with random operations which are critical for gaming. Sequential performance is also great, especially when it comes to the read speeds. The sequential write speeds aren’t as fast on this smaller drive, but they’re still 50% higher than the best SATA based drives and that’s not something to hide or be ashamed of.

It is also a drive that will last a long time and easily outlast its natural replacement period and the time when you’ll naturally want something new anyway. Plextor has a great track record when it comes to endurance and that is no wonder with the amount of testing the put their drives through.

While it is true that there are faster drives on the market, speed isn’t everything. I’m in love with this drive for its built quality, endurance, and design. As soon as my budget allows it, I’m going to equip my personal system and workstation with two of these drives – although I’m going to opt for the larger 512GB models myself.

Pros

Compact size and lightweight
Simplistic but beautiful design
TrueSpeed, TrueProtect, and LDPC technology
Heatsink for best performance and reliability
Great 4K read/write performance
5-year warranty

Cons

Won’t fit into your notebook, but there are other models for that usage
Not as fast as the larger models in the same series

“If it is possible to fall in love with a drive, then that’s what has happened here. The Plextor M8PeG is an awesome little drive that has everything you could want.”