The solid-state drive (SSD) market may be dominated by major names: Intel, Samsung, OCZ, Crucial, and so on, but this doesn’t mean the dark horse doesn’t have a shot. Case in point: Plextor. Though the company is best known for its inexpensive, reliable, and ubiquitous optical drives, it makes SSDs as well, and its newest in the recently released M3 series are capable of racing right alongside the big boys. The 256GB 256M3 ($369.99 list) stands up quite nicely to the best performers we’ve seen in the field—with a price most are hard pressed to beat.

A prime source of that value is the controller, the Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2. This is the same one used in the previous series, the M2S (we reviewed the 128GB version, the PX-128M2S, last year), which promises sequential read speeds of up to 525MBps and sequential write speeds of up to 445MBps; the data interface is 6Gbps SATA III, so you’ll be able to get as close to those ideal speeds as possible. The storage chips are 24nm Toshiba Toggle MLC NAND flash, and they’re paired with a nice-sized 512MB cache to bolster performance still more.

On top of this, and a five-year warranty (which is about twice as long as you get with most SSDs, the recent Intel SSD 520 Series being a notable exception, with the same extended period), the controller’s firmware has also been updated to introduce Plextor’s new True Speed feature set. This contains a number of utilities that the company claims optimize performance, including Bad Block Management, Global Wear Leveling, and Instant Restore. Plextor says True Speed prevents drastic drops in speed that occur after SSDs are used for long periods of time, or under states of heavy fragmentation.

Does all this make a difference? Absolutely. The PX-256M3 more than held its own in our benchmark tests against both our current Editors’ Choice, the OCZ Vertex 3, and the Intel SSD 520 Series. It couldn’t keep up with the Vertex 3 in sequential reads in the AS SSD Benchmark (476.6MBps versus 515.3MBps), but it was the winner at sequential writes (315.5MBps versus 281.2MBps for the Intel and 277.7MBps for the OCZ), and at both 4KB 64-thread reads and writes (276MBps in the former, versus 234.6MBps for the Intel and 182.5MBps for the OCZ; and 236.5MBps in the latter, versus 233.7MBps for the Intel and 229.8 for the OCZ). It placed first in the ISO Speed and Program Speed sections of the same test’s Copy Benchmark, but both the Intel and the OCZ came out ahead in the Game Speed trial (194.2MBps and 189MBps respectively, versus 175.1MBps).

The PX-256M3 was a bit less steady on other tests. It took the top spot in the 0.5KB, 1KB, and 2KB runs in the ATTO Disk Benchmark, then it excelled only with reads up to 32KB, then it was third place straight through until 8MB. Its 333.5MBps result in the CrystalDiskMark 512KB write test was the fastest (the OCZ’s 302.4MBps was second place), and in the 4KB read and write tests at the same queue depth, it also was at the front (with 270.2MBps and 264MBps respectively). But it fell behind in all the Futuremark PCMark 7 tests, never eking out a single win. And in the AS SSD Compression Benchmark, the Plextor drive was more consistent across a wider range of compression percentages, but the OCZ was faster throughout at reads and writes alike.

Good as the Plextor PX-256M3’s performance was in many situations, this inconsistency is one reason we can’t quite give it the nod over the Editors’ Choice Vertex 3—which also lists for $20 less. But, to be clear, it’s an incredibly close match-up, and the PX-256M3’s terrific price definitely makes a compelling case for it (especially over the Intel 520 Series). Plextor has come a long way in a year, and if the PX-256M3 is any indication, it’s not remotely finished yet—something that should have OCZ, Intel, and the other big SSD manufacturers constantly looking over their shoulders.

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