Plextor M6e Black Edition PCI Express SSD Review, M.2 In The Slot

by Marco Chiappetta — Monday, February 09, 2015, 12:00 PM EDT

Page 8:
Our Summary and Conclusion

Performance Summary: The Plextor M6e Black Edition performed very well throughout our entire battery of benchmarks. Versus last year’s standard M6e, performance hasn’t changed much at all, since the newer Black Edition is essentially the same drive with newer NAND, an updated M.2 to PCIe bridge card, and revamped black and red aesthetic. In comparison to some of today’s faster SATA drives, however, the Plextor M6e Black Edition offered measurable faster sequential transfers, especially in terms of read bandwidth. Small transfers, however, are less exciting and are on par with or below the SATA drives we tested.

The Plextor M6e Black Edition -- Find It At Amazon.Com

The Plextor M6e Black Edition hasn’t hit store shelved just yet, but we’re told pricing will be in-line with the original M6e, which can be found for about $1 per GB ($277 for the 256GB drive). If it does indeed arrive in that price range, the Plextor M6e Black Edition will command an approximate 25% premium over drives like the Samsung SSD 850 Pro, which can be had for about $0.72 per GB currently. If you work with large files and the higher sequential performance of a drive like the M6e Black Edition will speed up your workflow, it’s probably worth the investment. If you’re looking to a drive like this to speed up general system performance, however, it would be a less effective upgrade.

There are some other advantages to a drive like the M6e Black Edition, though. For one, it simply looks cool and because you won’t have to snake power and data cables to it, it may help clean up the inside of your system a bit. The large heatsink on the SSD itself is also a welcome addition. Plextor also offers a full 5-year warranty on the drive. Some of those things are probably minor considerations for many of you, but they’re worth pointing out nonetheless.

Ultimately, the Plextor M6e Black Edition is a refinement of last year’s model, that should appeal to folks put off by the plain-Jane aesthetics of the original. It’s not a barn burner in the world of PCIe-based solid state drives, but it’s not priced like one either and still puts up solid numbers.


Strong Sequential Performance Beefy Heatsink On SSD 5-Year Warranty	Not Faster Than Last Year's Model Small File Transfer Speeds Are Modest