Conclusion

Based on the performance numbers alone, I was ready to give this SSD a bit of a lambasting in the conclusion. Good read speed or no, I’d expect better write performance from a SATA III  drive. It doesn’t need to be mind blowing, but at least equal last generation’s strong suit. However when you look at the price this drive can be found at, you start to see that it’s not a bad purchase at all.

Sitting pretty at £140 makes this Plextor a very attractive little drive. Some of its read speeds in tests like ATTO were excellent, almost 400MBps, and while it’s write speed might not be amazing, it’s far from horrendous. TRIM could use a little work, but I think that could be down to this drive being a review sample and therefore I probably should have given it a secure erase before testing. My bad.

This is far from the greatest SSD out there, but it’s at a good price point and it comes with lots of features that are designed to improve shelf life. We’ll only know if they work several months and years from now, but the fact that they’re there is a bit comforting.

For raw performance in an SSD, the latest Sandforce controllers look to be where it’s at, but for a good all round performance with a nice prige tag, this Plextor M2 drive isn’t a bad choice.

Pros

Good read speed thanks to SATA III interface
Lots of shelf life improving features
Well priced

Cons

Not the greatest write performance
TRIM execution wasn’t great, but could be it needs a full erase at this point