We’re not mad. We’re just disappointed. When Plextor announced in February that it, too, was entering the SSD market, we were cautiously optimistic. After all, more competition is always a good thing and Plextor wouldn’t put out a subpar product just to try to capitalize on a trend—would it?
The Plextor PX-128M1S is the first drive we’ve tested that is built on the Marvell 88SS8014-BHP2 “Da Vinci” controller—and if its performance is indicative of the platform as a whole, we hope it’s the last.
Although read speeds were respectable for a last-gen drive at 135MB/s average sustained reads, average sustained writes were a sub-mediocre 50MB/s. And though the controller has its own garbage-collection and wear-leveling algorithms, it doesn’t support the TRIM command.
We like that the Plextor drive ships with a copy of Acronis True Image to facilitate upgrades, but that hardly makes it unique and the drive just can’t compete with modern SSDs.
Given that the 128GB PX-128M1S doesn’t offer top-tier performance, we were surprised by Plextor’s decision to charge $400 for it. The price dropped to $335 within a few weeks which makes it slightly more reasonable, but not enough so. You can get the 128GB Torqx for just $30 more and get much better performance and TRIM support to boot.
See comparative benchmarks on the SSD landing page.
Cheap; ships with a copy of Acronis True Image.
Doesn't support the TRIM command; average sustained writes were a mere 50MB/s.
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