Unboxing & Review: Plextor M7V 512GB SSD

Thanks to the rising demand and heated competition amongst SSD manufacturers, the price of SSD went down drastically to a point that it no longer cost you an arm and a leg to own one. Plextor is a renowned brand that offers some of the highly reliable SSD available in the market back then and we're looking at its latest budget-friendly TLC NAND Flash based SSD this time, the Plextor M7V 512GB SSD.

The Plextor M7V comes available in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB variant that is surprisingly affordable at $49.99, $69.99 and $129.99 on Newegg, a sweet spot price that makes it as one of the most affordable SSD around. Performance wise? That's what we will be finding out in this review.

Specifications

Performance
Sequential Read Speed**	Up to 560 MB/s
Sequential Write Speed**	Up to 530 MB/s
Random Read Speed***	Up to 98,000
Random Write Speed***	Up to 84,000
Physical
Capacity	512GB
Controller	Marvell 88SS1074B1
NAND Flash	TOSHIBA 15nm TLC with Toggle mode
DRAM Cache	768MB DDR3
Form Factor	2.5 inch
Interface	SATA 6Gb/s, compatible with SATA 3Gb/s and 1.5 Gb/s
Power Connector	15-pin SATA connector for DC 5V input
Data Connector	7-pin SATA connector
Dimension (L x W x H)	100 x 69.85 x 6.8 mm / 3.94 x 2.75 x 0.27 inch
Weight	60g / 2.12oz (Max.)
Environment and Reliability
DC Requirement	5V / 2.0A (Max.)
Temperature	0°C ~ 70°C / 32°F ~ 158°F (Operating)
Shock	1500G (Max.), at 1 msec half-sine
Vibration	7 ~ 800Hz, 2.17Grms (Operation)
MTBF	1,500,000 hours
Endurance (TBW)	320
Warranty	3-Year
Compatibility
Operating System Supported	Microsoft Windows OS / Linux OS / APPLE Mac OS
Agency Approval	UL, TUV, FCC, CE, BSMI, VCCI, RCM, KCC, EAC, ROHS, WHQL
Command Set Support	TRIM, S.M.A.R.T., NCQ, ATA/ATAPI-8
Firmware Upgrade	Supported
Highline Features
Features	PlexTurbo, PlexCompressor, PlexVault, PlexNitro, LDPC

Unboxing

The M7V which Plextor sent to our test lab is the 512GB variant, which falls under the same Value series as the M6V in our previous review. It comes with a 3-year limited warranty from Plextor, support for PlexTurbo, PlexCompress, and PlexVault.

At the back of the box, you'll find the specifications of the drive, performance, power requirements, operating system and file format support, box content, etc.

Other than the user's guide and the Plextor M7V SSD, there are no fancy accessories included in the box which is to keep the cost down to a minimum.

Another noticeable different is that the M7V comes in an enclosure that looks similar to the previous M5S and doesn't come with any fancy sticker like what the M6V has.

At the back of the M7V, you'll find the usual details i.e serial number, model name, capacity, etc.

A warranty sticker can be found on the side of the enclosure and any tampering done to the sticker will result in the void of the 3 years limited warranty from Plextor.

Software: Plextool
The Plextool is Plextor's very own SSD Toolbox that is tailored for Plextor SSD with features such as viewing necessary information, firmware updates, secure erase/format, diagnostic, and SSD caching feature.

Software: PlexTurbo Viewer
While Plextor did mention PlexTurbo support for M7V, the PlexTurbo for the M7V doesn't appear to be the same as the built-in with the PlexTool for the Plextor M6e Black Edition but rather a dedicated tool of its own named PlexTurbo Viewer. Options available are the adjustments for cache size, cache release time, enable or disable preloaded hot operation files and auto execute PlexTurbo Viewer on boot.

Testing Method

Test Rig Configuration
CPU Cooler	Raijintek Triton 240
CPU	Intel Core i7 4790K
Motherboard	ASUS Maximus Hero VII
Memory	G.Skill TridentX @2400MHz
Primary Hard Drive	-
Power Supply	be quiet! Straight Power 10 600W
Chassis	Vector BenchCase

Synthetic Benchmark

We've run a series of Synthetic Benchmark with a few selected SSD benchmark tools to see how it does on the numbers, both with and without PlexTurbo feature.

AS SSD Benchmark

Widely used SSD benchmarking utility that uses incompressible data to simulate the worst possible scenario for an SSD and thus giving a much lower sequential read and write speed result than what has been stated by the manufacturer as a result of the heavy workload.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

The most frequently used benchmarking utility by many manufacturers for performance specification. As ATTO Disk Benchmark uses compressible data rather than compressible data, it results in higher benchmark scores. We've run the benchmark with transfer size ranged from 0.5KB to 8192KB and a total length of the test to be 256MB.

CrystalDiskMark

Developed by a Japanese coder that goes by the nickname Hiyohiyo, CrystalDiskMark is one of the most frequent used SSD Benchmark utility to measure SSD's read and write performance.

Real World Performance

We've run several tests using several SSD with at least 50% capacity occupied with various commonly used software to simulate the real world scenario.

There isn't much performance gap seen but from the result above, we can see that the Plextor M7V is doing pretty well with all the test conducted.

Verdict

The Plextor M7V isn't the fastest SSD around but it's doing pretty okay across all synthetic benchmarks conducted if we were to compare its result with its predecessor, the Plextor M6V, the improvements are quite significant in terms of performance - not just the price!

Set aside the performance difference that might not seem to be too significant in real world usage if we weren't even looking at the stock clock, the M7V is a real steal if we were to compare it against other SSDs of its category that performs closely or worse, but costs a few bucks more.

With a price that is surprisingly affordable - especially for the 512GB model, we couldn't find any reason to not recommend it to those who has been longing for a decent SSD without having to break the bank to own one.

Pros