Specifications, Pricing and Availability

Plextor has three capacity sizes planned for the M5 Pro - 128GB, 256GB and a large 512GB. As with previous generations of the M Series, each capacity size has an increasing scale of DRAM capacity that is used as a buffer. The 256GB model we're looking at today uses a 512MB buffer and that is increased to 768MB on the 512GB model. The 128GB M5 Pro trails the pack with just 256MB.

The sequential write performance doesn't increase as the capacity ramps up beyond the 256GB capacity size. The 128GB M5 Pro is rated at 340MB/s sequential write, but the two larger drives are rated at 450MB/s. Unlike SSDs based on SandForce technology, the Plextor M5 Pro does not drop performance when working with incompressible data, so 450 is 450 regardless of data type.

Plextor seems to be starting a tradition. The M5 Pro, like the M3 Pro uses a 7mm z-height case, a features omitted on the baseline M5 and M3 products. After the M3 Pro we just sort of figured that Plextor would evolve all of their forthcoming SSDs to the new ultrabook 7mm standard, but that wasn't the case.

At the time of writing we were not able to find the Plextor M5 Pro for sale in the US since it is so new. Last week drives started to appear on shelves of retail stores in Japan and Taiwan. From what we've observed the M5 Pro will take the place of the M3 Pro and the price will be roughly what the M3 Pro was at launch. It's unclear if Plextor will continue to offer the M3 or M3 Pro once the current inventory sells out.

With the M5 Pro, Plextor has brought back their full retail package that includes a desktop adapter bracket, screws for attaching your drive in a desktop PC, cloning and backup software utility and a couple of nice manuals. The M5S that we reviewed last month didn't ship with any of those accessories. The M5 Pro also brings back the Plextor five year warranty, the M5S dropped down to just three years.