The Plextor M8V SATA SSD Review: Toshiba 3D TLC In a Mainstream Drive

Random Read Performance

Our first test of random read performance uses very short bursts of operations issued one at a time with no queuing. The drives are given enough idle time between bursts to yield an overall duty cycle of 20%, so thermal throttling is impossible. Each burst consists of a total of 32MB of 4kB random reads, from a 16GB span of the disk. The total data read is 1GB.

The burst random read performance of the Plextor M8V is slightly slower than the other current mainstream SATA SSDs, but it is clearly faster than the drives using Micron's 32L 3D NAND.

Our sustained random read performance is similar to the random read test from our 2015 test suite: queue depths from 1 to 32 are tested, and the average performance and power efficiency across QD1, QD2 and QD4 are reported as the primary scores. Each queue depth is tested for one minute or 32GB of data transferred, whichever is shorter. After each queue depth is tested, the drive is given up to one minute to cool off so that the higher queue depths are unlikely to be affected by accumulated heat build-up. The individual read operations are again 4kB, and cover a 64GB span of the drive.

On the longer random read test, the Plextor M8V places just behind the Crucial MX500—it's again slower than its peers, but only to a small degree in this case.

The Plextor M8V's power efficiency during the random read test is better than that of most drives using older NAND generations, but is the worst among the drives using 64L 3D TLC.

Plextor M8V 512GBIntel SSD 545s 512GBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 PRO 512GBSamsung 860 PRO 512GBCrucial BX300 480GBCrucial MX300 525GBCrucial MX500 500GBPlextor S2C 512GBADATA Ultimate SU800 512GBToshiba TR200 480GBOCZ VX500 512GB

At QD1 and QD2, the random read performance of the Plextor M8V is competitive with most SATA SSDs. At QD4 and above, it starts to fall behind the high-end drives, but for most consumer workloads that won't matter much.

Random Write Performance

Our test of random write burst performance is structured similarly to the random read burst test, but each burst is only 4MB and the total test length is 128MB. The 4kB random write operations are distributed over a 16GB span of the drive, and the operations are issued one at a time with no queuing.

The Plextor M8V has top-notch burst random write performance, showing that the drive's SLC write cache is very quick.

As with the sustained random read test, our sustained 4kB random write test runs for up to one minute or 32GB per queue depth, covering a 64GB span of the drive and giving the drive up to 1 minute of idle time between queue depths to allow for write caches to be flushed and for the drive to cool down.

On the sustained random write test, the Plextor M8V falls back dowwn to the middle of the pack, but it manages to have very small leads over both the Crucial MX500 and Intel 545s.

The Plextor M8V is more power efficient for random writes than the Intel 545s but otherwise its efficiency lags behind the other drives of its generation.

Plextor M8V 512GBIntel SSD 545s 512GBSamsung 850 EVO 500GBSamsung 850 PRO 512GBSamsung 860 PRO 512GBCrucial BX300 480GBCrucial MX300 525GBCrucial MX500 500GBPlextor S2C 512GBADATA Ultimate SU800 512GBToshiba TR200 480GBOCZ VX500 512GB

Like most drives in its class, the Plextor M8V's random write performance is mostly saturated by around QD4. The performance at high queue depths is well below that of the Samsung drives or the peak eventually reached by the Crucial MX500, but the Plextor M8V performs fine for a low-end drive.