Why You Can Trust CNET Plextor M7V SSD review: This SSD will put your current traditional hard drive to shame
Plextor's latest M7V is an affordable solid-state drive that will last you a long time.
The M7V is the successor to the M6V and is Plextor's new value-priced solid-state drive (SSD). At launch the M7V has a low suggested price of $50, $71 and $146 for 128GB, 256GB and 512GB, respectively (actual street price will likely be lower). In return, its performance was slightly slower than the M6V. Still, the drive does what it's designed to do: act as a replacement drive for computers that still run on regular old hard drives. Used in this way, it will help significantly boost the computer's performance.
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
Plextor M7V SSD's specs
| Capacities | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB |
|---|---|---|---|
| From factor | SATA 3 (6Gbps) 2.5-inch standard | SATA 3 (6Gbps) 2.5-inch standard | SATA 3 (6Gbps) 2.5-inch standard |
| Model | PX-128M7VC | PX-256M7VC | PX-512M7VC |
| Cache | 256MB DDR3 | 512MB DDR3 | 768MB DDR3 |
| Controller | Marvel l 88SS1074B1 | Marvel l 88SS1074B1 | Marvel l 88SS1074B1 |
| NAND Flash tpe | Toshiba Toggle 15nm TLC | Toshiba Toggle 15nm TLC | Toshiba Toggle 15nm TLC |
| Sequential read | Up to 560 MB/s | Up to 560 MB/s | Up to 560 MB/s |
| Sequential write | Up to 500 MB/s | Up to 530 MB/s | Up to 530 MB/s |
| Random read | Up to 97K IOPS | Up to 98K IOPS | Up to 98K IOPS |
| Random write | Up to 51K IOPS | Up to 84K IOPS | Up to 84K IOPS |
| Endurance (total data written) | 80TB | 160TB | 320TB |
| Warranty | 3 years | 3 years | 3 years |
Other high-end drives, such as the Samsung 850 Pro, tend to include a drive bay bracket, or cloning software or a USB-to-SATA cable to help you migrate to the SSD from a regular hard drive. The M7V includes none of those extras, but that's generally the case for budget SSDs.
CNET Labs' SSD data transfer performance
- As OS drive (read and write)
- As secondary drive (write only)
- As secondary drive (read only)
In testing, the M7V did well for a value SSD. In fact in certain tests it was faster than some other budget drives, such as the Toshiba Q300 or the OCZ Triton 100.
The M7V also has a high endurance level, meaning you can write a lot of data to it before it becomes unreliable. (Read more about SSD endurance here.) Plextor says that the M7V can handle up to 80TB, 120TB and 320TB written for the 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities, respectively. More specifically, if you write about 50GB of data to the 128GB capacity drive every day, it'd take some five years before its endurance ran out. The larger capacities would respectively take double and quadruple that amount of time. In regular usage, most of us don't write more than a few gigabytes per day, and most days we don't write anything to the computer's internal drive at all.
PC Mark 8 overall storage performance
- Storage Score
- Storage bandwith (MB/s)
In all, while the M7V isn't the fastest standard SSD on the market, it's also not the slowest -- but it is among the most affordable. It's a good SSD that will last years with normal use and give you a noticeable performance boost over any traditional hard drive.
