Final Thoughts

Plextor's M6e is the get-go 1000.2 socket SSD nosotros take seen, though it'south probably more authentic to phone call information technology a PCI Express carte du jour unless you plan to risk your warranty by removing the contained 1000.2 device. Either way, information technology'south free of the SATA bus' confinements, affording the M6e more than bandwidth than a 2.five" SATA SSD.

The M6e's quoted 770MB/south read and 580MB/due south write speeds had u.s. expecting big things in our custom file transfer tests, just the drive didn't evangelize with simply 280MB/s. The M6S and M6M too disappointed, ofttimes struggling to compete with dated products such as the Crucial m4 mSATA and OCZ Vertex 4.

To be off-white, possibly we shouldn't be surprised as the OCZ RevoDrive 350 is rated for up to 1800MB/south and we only get 630MB/s. Maximum throughputs are based on sequential data moving between two drives, not copying on one drive, which at least halves performance since we are both reading and writing.

Thwarting came when nosotros found that the M6e was slower than many SATA SSDs in the unmarried large file re-create exam, though it was thankfully able to outpace them by a slim margin when working with many smaller files.

In spite of their less-than-stellar file re-create operation, Plextor'due south SSDs crushed our existent-world awarding tests. The M6S and M6M shaved a few seconds off the SanDisk Farthermost Ii's game installation fourth dimension while the M6e was even faster.

The Microsoft Security Essentials virus scan results were also a high point every bit the M6S and M6M outpaced all the other SATA SSDs we tested past over 20%. The results are surprising enough that we ran the exam several times to confirm.

The constructed tests didn't reveal annihilation also unusual, except Atto Disk Benchmark showing particularly stiff 1K and 2K data performance for the Plextor drives. Mayhap this is due to their custom firmware, which is what we as well attribute to the drives losing little to no performance later on being filled.

Plextor's SSDs are fetching a slight price premium with the M6S matching the slightly faster Crucial M550 and the M6e costing almost 80% more than the M6S with just about 30% more functioning.

In its PCI Limited grade, nosotros would laissez passer on the M6e. Nosotros would be interested if it were sold as a standalone M.ii socket SSD at a more affordable price. For now, the M6S and M6M offer excellent performance and reliability, putting them among our most preferred SSD choices.