Plextor M7V M.2 SATA SSD Review
Final Thoughts
Before we move on to the conclusion, there is one more test that I wanted to show you. One of the conversations that I had at CES was about TLC write speeds (not necessarily THIS drive but, since this is the 1st TLC drive I’ve tested, I figured why not) after the cache has been filled up tanked. I created a 20 GB zip file full of ISOs and installed another 16 GB of RAM in the test system. After the RAM was installed, I created a 22 GB RAM Drive and used this for copying to and from a Samsung 840 SATA SSD and to the Plextor M7v.
As you can see below, the M7V’s TLC is able to match the Samsung 840 when copying off the drive (Read).
But when you copy to the drive (write) the results are very different between the two drives and keep in mind that I’ve been using the Samsung drive in my test system for over a year. Both drives slowed down considerably when coping the 20 GB file from the RAMDISK to the drive but the TLC based drive copied at a much slower rate. However, I want to reserve judgement at the moment as this is the first TLC drive that I have tested.
The M7V performed well in our testing. Performance came very close to matching the manufactures published specifications. However, there’s a slight trade off when cramming more data into the same area of silicon. We see a slower write speed after the cache has been exhausted. This is observable even on the Samsung Evo 240 which is MLC. When we pit SLC vs MLC there is also a write performance hit. While capacity over a given area is higher, MLC and TLC do write slower compared to SLC. Again, a trade-off when trying to produce lower costing and higher capacity SSDs. But it’s not all doom and gloom as most consumer based SSDs are read heavy. I know that in my PC I do more reads than I do writes.
I’ve been using the Plextor M7V in my daily PC as the OS hard drive for a little while now. From a “how it feels” stand point, it feels no different than the Samsung Evo 840 that it replaced. My PC is just as responsive for all tasks. Pricing for the Plextor M7V is slated to be $49.99 for the 128 GB, $70.99 for the 256 GB and $135.99. If you’re looking for an inexpensive and speedy SSD, don’t shy away from the Plextor M7v.
