Welcome to my unboxing and first look at the PlexTor M5 Pro. This is their new
flagship SSD drive. And uh let's let's
start with just sort of a overview of the packaging. So this is cool. 7mm
height for Ultras Slim Notebook. So they have improved the compatibility of their
drive by reducing the height of it, which uh we're starting to see as a bit
of a trend with SSD manufacturers. This is good because ultrabooks are not going
away and we're going to continue to need slimmer and smaller storage devices that
maintain the performance standards that enthusiasts demand. Speaking of
maintaining performance standards, this features their exclusive firmware with
their true speed technology. True speed technology sounds like the kind of thing
that you would find on like, you know, a motherboard box where it's like maintain
more performance and more better over time. And the reality of it is True
Speed is not um is not snake oil. True
Speed is real. True Speed is Plexto's way of saying that their firmware
through exclusive algorithms and through
the talent of their engineering team.
Plexor firmware is able to better maintain the like new speed of the drive
over time compared to their competitors. It has been tested. it has been
validated by third-party sources and it's very very impressive. So, Plexto is
sort of like um here how do we how do we compare them? They're sort of like Intel
in that they are the company that is doing the firmware. They're doing the
validation of their drive. They're doing the manufacturer of their drive, but
they're not actually the designer and manufacturer of the hardware chip
controller that goes on it. So, Plexto's M5 Pro is actually using a brand new
controller. Here, we'll start opening it up here. This is Marvel's newest, latest
controller. So, you know Marvel controllers from high performance drives
in the past, such as Plexar's own drives or Crucial Drives. However, Plexor is
the first one with the 8855987 controller. And I know that's
not a sexy name, but what Marll seems
to well seems to be capable of doing is delivering wicked controllers. And what
we know that Plexor is capable of doing is delivering wicked firmwares. So I'm
very excited to see how this drive performs once we actually get it fired
up. It's using Toggle Nan, which again is the fastest, most premium NAND, which
stands to reason because this is not a cheap inexpensive drive. It's got 512
megs of cache. That is DDR3 1333 cache,
which is one of the fastest caches out there. So it is well, it's
state-of-the-art. This new controller from Marvel is actually technically SATA
3.1. So even though that looks like a standard SATA, SATA 2, SATA 3 uh data
and power connector, it actually supports a couple of new things,
including most importantly the ability to prioritize trim commands. So it not
only supports trim, but it can wait to do trim in order to finish some
outstanding IO's and then execute the trim command in order to improve
efficiency. as long as you have a compatible controller on the other side
of the of the data connection. So, this
drive I can tell you guys right now is pretty much at the top in terms of the
sequential read and write performance. However, there's a lot more to it
necessarily than that when it comes to drive performance. So, you can see
what's their specs. So, they're saying up to 540 megs per second reads and up
to 450 megs per second right. So those reads are the fastest out there and the
rights lag just a little bit behind the vertex 4. Random read and random write
IOPS again are pretty much class leading. So I'm expecting very very good
performance from this drive. Their mean time between failure is
2,400,000 hours. So remember guys, meanantime between failure uses an
industry standard method to determine what the average time for failure for. I
think they have to use something like uh however many hundreds of drives at a
time. and they run them all through a standardized test and see how many of
them fail and after how long to determine how long it would take for the
drives to fail on average. Let's just see if see if they have anything else to
say for themselves besides that. So, enterprise standard high temperature
burn-in process. Uh Plex instant restore technology maintains SSD performance.
Oh, right. So, you can restore it to a like new state um using their tools very
very easily. I did forget to mention that. Low power consumption, disc
cloning and backup utility included. Neat. Okay. So, yeah, let's have a look at what's included in the box. So, we've
got a 2 and 1/2 in to 3 and 1/2 in adapter. All the mounting screws you
need, although if you're installing it in a notebook, which you can cuz it's slim, um it'll you'll it'll probably
come with the mounting adapters that you need. A Ziploc baggie
includes Oh, neat. Oh, neat. Look at
that. Comes with SSD performance analyzer. Um I mean, I guess they're not
shy about their performance because they're they're Plexar. I mean, I had a
meeting with them and they were like, "Yeah, yeah, we we're pretty much the
best when it comes to quality and performance." Um, I I actually didn't
even know this at the time, but they're one of the top manufacturers in the
world. So, a lot of the drives you buy with other brand names on them uh may
actually be manufactured by Plexor, so bear that in mind. I included software
Echo, Backup Now Easy, and bonus trials. Ninja software trial, Shadow software
trial, MediaMaker software trial. Okay, interesting. Quick installation guide,
limited warranty. Uh, this is a 5-year warranty product, so they are standing
behind it there. Sorry, I did forget to mention that on the front. Um, so that
is right up there with competing products like the O Intel 520 series and
the OCZ Vertex 4. So there you have it. That's the unboxing of the PlexTor M5P.
This is the true successor to the M3P using a last generation controller and
this is a very exciting time for SSD enthusiasts. Don't forget to subscribe
to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer videos.