Product Listing

Plextor M7V SSD review: A first foray into TLC NAND

By Kenny Yeo - 10 Jul 2016

Conclusion

A SSD for bargain hunters

If you want to be fashionably late to a party, you had better roll up to the door with something to show for, because all eyes will be on you. For Plextor, who’s late to the TLC NAND party, they proudly proclaimed that their new TLC drive - the M7V - would offer performance and endurance that are beyond the competition. It’s hard for us to determine the latter, but we can certainly test the former and the results were quite disappointing.

Despite, Plextor’s bold claims, we found that the M7V’s performance was mediocre, at best. While sequential read and write speeds were quite respectable and decent, we found that its 4K performance was generally erratic and disappointing. Clearly, its 4K performance needs some more work.

Speaking of performance, it seems that insofar as TLC NAND SSDs are concerned, Samsung’s SSD 750 Evo and SSD 850 Evo are unmatched. In just about every benchmark, the two drives were ranked amongst the fastest, and the SSD 850 Evo, even though it had a capacity of 250GB, was more than capable of keeping up with the other larger capacity 480GB and 512GB drives. Larger capacity drives are generally faster because of increased parallelism due to their greater number of onboard NAND dies.

Fortunately, the M7V tries to make up for its lack of performance with its various features. The accompanying PlexTool drive management utility is straightforward to use and useful for maintaining and update your SSD. PlexVault is a nifty tool for users to hide contents on their systems from prying eyes. And PlexCompressor is a nice feature to have that can potentially free up space for users.

The M7V doesn't quite live up to Plextor's claims, but it is extremely affordable and boasts a long rated endurance.

And for users concerned about endurance, the M7V’s has some of the highest rated endurance that we have seen for a TLC NAND SSD. The 512GB model, for instance, is said to be good for 320TBW (TB written). In comparison, the new 500GB variant of the Samsung SSD 750 Evo has a rated endurance of just 100TBW, while the 480GB variant of the OCZ Trion 150 is rated at 120TBW.

But the biggest trump card Plextor has got to be its price. The 512GB that is we have tested here and a going price of just S$179. You’d be hard pressed to find another SSD of similar capacity with a comparable price. Samsung’s SSD 850 Evo and SSD 750 Evo are the performance kings, but half a terabyte versions of these two drives are S$259 and S$229 respectively - that translates to a premium of S$50 or 27%. To add, OCZ’s Trion 150 is S$190 and Sony’s SLW-MG4 is S$259.

In closing, the Plextor M7V is a sensible option for users on a tight budget. It won’t win any performance awards, but it is backed up by a rich feature set, great rated endurance, but most of all, a very attractive price -  the exact qualities that casual users are looking for a basic SSD. As such, we've awarded the Plextor M7V our Best Value award.

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7.5
  • Performance 7
  • Features 8
  • Value 9
The Good
Lots of nifty features like PlexVault and PlexCompressor
Decent sequential read and write speeds
High claimed endurance for TLC-based SSD
Very attractive price
The Bad
No support for hardware encryption
Erratic performance especially on 4K workloads
No accessories
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