Modern HDTVs can read all kinds of technology; DLNA streamed files, external hard drives, flash drives and heck, even SD cards. One thing they can’t read is data from USB optical drives. Or rather, make optical drives one thing HDTVs couldn’t read: Plextor’s new PX-612U External Slim DVD/CD Writer connects via USB and can play information stored on discs, thanks to some technical trickery that convinces TVs that the device is actually an external hard drive.
Anyone who's been around PCs for a length of time remembers when Plextor had a reputation for building top-shelf optical drives. For the most part, they were fast performing and reliable, and of course more expensive than your average bargain-bin burner. Plextor still sells optical drives, but like everyone else, the company also dabbles in solid state drives. The company's newest SSD product is the M3 Series with "True Speed" technology and a comparatively lengthy 5-year warranty.
Plextor's new M3S Series of solid state drives rely on server-grade controllers from Marvell and 24nm NAND flash memory from Toshiba to do the heavy lifting, but when it comes to finessing file transfers, Plextor gives equal credit to its own exclusive firmware with True Speed technology and proprietary Bad Block Management, Global Wear Leveling, and Instant Restore technologies. All of these fancy terms combine to "prevent drastic drops in read/write speeds that normally occur with SSDs after prolonged use or when data becomes heavily fragmented," Plextor says.
Remember Plextor? The name isn't thrown around as often as it once was, but Plextor's still out there, and cocky as ever. Take the new M2P Series solid state drive (SSD). Plextor says it's capable of sequential read and write speeds of up to 500MB/s and 440MB/s, respectively, which "clearly makes the M2P the fastest SSD currently available." Come again?
We’ve been recommending Plextor’s B940SA 12x drive on our Best of the Best list for more than a year now, so we were delighted to receive a challenger that could shake things up—even if it was another Plextor drive. Hey, why not build on that good track record?
Plextor shared all the right connections with its sleek and sexy PX-LB950UE Blu-ray burner to be a player in the optical game. This external BD writer boasts 12x recording (BD-R), a low vibration system to prevent screwing up pricey BD media, an 8MB buffer, LightScribe support, and both SuperSpeed USB 3.0 and eSATA hookups.
If the automotive world progressed as fast as the computer industry, the old joke goes, we‘d all have $1,000 cars that get 400 miles to the gallon, never need maintenance, and crash catastrophic-ally every eight weeks for no reason. Ancient punch lines aside, comparing this year’s storage options to those of even half a decade ago would be like entering a Bugatti Type 35 in the Preakness Stakes.
We’ll say this for the Plextor M2 Series SSD: It’s a huge step up from Plextor’s last SSD. The M1S Series SSD we tested in our June 2010 roundup used Marvell’s “Da-Vinci” 88SS8014-BHP2 controller, which suffered from instability and slow writes. We gave that drive a 5 verdict. To our great relief, the M2 series SSD instead uses Marvell’s newer 6Gb/s SATA controller, the 88SS9174-BLD2—marking the third appearance of a Marvell 9174 controller in this roundup.
Plextor has come out with a new solid state drive line the company says
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