Plextor M5 Pro 128GB with Xtreme Firmware SSD Review

Introduction

We started testing 128GB class drives again a couple of months ago and the Plextor M5 Pro was the drive we really wanted to get in the ring. Plextor has always manufactured excellent 128GB capacity drives, some of the best on the market. So, when we decided to take a deeper look at this capacity size, we had to bring Plextor into the mix.

The problem was, a couple of months ago was a crossover period for Plextor. The M5 Pro that we are looking at today received a firmware update to Plextor's Xtreme Firmware. Plextor was also in the middle of a hardware change, also Xtreme. The M5 Pro can be flashed to the new M5 Pro Xtreme, but the full on M5 Pro Xtreme has a hardware change as well. It's all a bit confusing, but the breakdown is like this, M5 Pro uses 8K page sizes in the 19nm NAND flash. M5 Pro Xtreme uses new 19nm NAND flash with 16K page sizes.

Today we'll look at the Plextor M5 Pro 128GB, with 8K page size 19nm NAND flash, flashed with the new Xtreme firmware update. This isn't Plextor's newest M5 offering, but it gives us a model to look at until a Xtreme drive with new 16K page size hits the lab.