Plextor to Demonstrate M8Pe Flagship SSD, EX1 USB Type-C SSD at Computex

Plextor plans to showcase its new SSDs next week at Computex 2016 trade show in Taipei, Taiwan. The new M8Pe will be the company’s new flagship storage solution and also the first high-end drive from the company in two years. Meanwhile, the EX1 will be Plextor’s first external solid-state storage device designed for those, who demand ultra-fast flash drives. In addition, the firm will demonstrate its next-generation mainstream M8Se SSD at the trade-show.

The Plextor brand got famous back in the 1990s, when the company introduced its first optical disc drives, which eventually were recognized as one of the finest quality ODDs in the industry. Eventually, the company experimented with other products as well, but its ODDs based on precision electric motors from Shinano Kenshi (the owner of the trademark) were still the best known devices featuring the name. Fast forward to 2010, Lite-On Technology licensed the Plextor brand, hired a team of engineers and teamed up with Marvell and Toshiba to develop SSDs, which would match the legendary name with performance and quality. Over the following years, Plextor/Lite-On released a number of SSDs that became popular among enthusiasts, which is why every new product by the company gets a great deal of attention. The years 2014 and 2015 were not exactly good for Plextor, though: the company ran into problems with its M6 Pro and then had to cancel the M7e. As a result, Plextor’s high-end lineup has not been updated for two years now, a very long time for the rapidly developing solid-state storage industry. However, the new flagship from the popular brand appears to be just around the corner and on paper it looks quite good.

The Plextor M8Pe family of SSDs will be based on Marvell’s 88SS1093 controller as well as Toshiba’s MLC NAND flash memory made using 15 nm manufacturing technology. The 88SS1093 features three cores and supports Marvell’s third-generation NANDEdge error correction control and management technology, which is based on LDPC (low-density parity-check code) and is designed to improve reliability of planar MLC and TLC NAND flash memory made using 15 nm fabrication process. Besides this, the controller fully supports NVMe protocol as well as new power management technologies.

The M8Pe drives will be available in 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB and 1 TB configurations. Plextor is specing the M8Pe 1 TB at up to 2500 MB/s for sequential reads and up to 1400 MB/s for sequential writes, but more affordable models will feature considerably lower speeds. The highest-capacity M8Pe can also perform up to 280K random read IOPS as well as up to 240K random write IOPS. Plextor’s numbers look rather competitive against Samsung’s 950 PRO, but we will need to test the novelty first before drawing any conclusions here.

As for form-factors, expect the new M8Pe flagship drives from Plextor to be available in both add-in PCIe 3.0 x4 card as well as M.2-2280 versions. It is noteworthy that the rated performance of the M8Pe drives in different form-factors is equal. The SSDs will feature heatsinks to prevent overheating of components as well as illuminating LEDs to complement modern high-end motherboards and PC chassis.

In addition to the flagship M8Pe, the Plextor will also demonstrate its forthcoming mainstream product, the M8Se. This SSD will come in an M.2 form-factor and will feature PCIe interface. At this time we have no information about the controller or NAND used by the M8Se.

Finally, the Plextor EX1 will be the brand’s first external fixed storage solution in a decade. The EX1 will be offered in 128 GB, 256 GB or 512 GB capacities. The maximum transfer rate of the drive will be 500 MB/s, which means that we are talking about an SSD and not just another USB flash stick. As for the interface, the EX1 will rely on USB Type-C (USB 3.1 Gen 1, 5 Gbps) and will thus be compatible with the latest PCs. While a fast external SSD from Plextor seems to be an interesting product, it remains to be seen which of Plextor’s exclusive technologies it will support, given the size and other constraints. Earlier this year we reviewed the Samsung T3 external USB-C SSD and it left a very positive impression. Plextor’s EX1 will offer some competition to Samsung’s external SSD.

The M8Pe SSDs from Plextor are expected to hit the market already in June. Pricing information has yet to be disclosed, but we do know that the drives will be backed by a five-year warranty. Further details regarding the M8Se and EX1 SSDs are unknown, but we’ll publish that information once its available.

The Toshiba OCZ RD400 (256GB, 512GB, 1TB) M.2 PCIe SSD Review

Having recently assimilated OCZ and turned it into an enthusiast-oriented consumer brand, Toshiba has released their first M.2 PCIe SSD into the consumer market. Initially previewed by OCZ as the RevoDrive 400 and now simply the OCZ RD400, it is a high-end PCIe 3 NVMe SSD based on last year’s OEM-only Toshiba XG3.

Toshiba Revamps OCZ Brand

Over the past few months, Toshiba has started fully assimilating & integrating OCZ, the SSD business they acquired from bankruptcy in 2014. Rather than just absorb OCZ’s SSD-related assets like the Indilinx SSD controllers, Toshiba kept the business relatively intact as the independently operated subsidiary OCZ Storage Solutions. The existing product lines were updated to use Toshiba NAND and OCZ drives accounted for the bulk of Toshiba’s retail and consumer SSD presence.

Last year, the OCZ Trion 100 marked a shift in strategy as a Toshiba-developed drive bore OCZ branding for the first time. OCZ has continued developing their own products as well, but now the two development roadmaps are being combined, some projects have been repurposed as Toshiba products instead of OCZ products, and work is underway to reduce the overlap between the product lines.

Organizationally, OCZ is being absorbed into Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. (TAEC), though the brand and the products they develop will still be international. Later this year, TAEC will be consolidating several Silicon Valley offices onto a single campus in San Jose and their former OCZ employees will no longer work at a separate location.

The public facing OCZ name will function as a consumer-only brand which now features just three products. The Trion, Vector and RevoDrive families are all that’s left and the names have been shortened to just two letters, giving a lineup of TR150, VT180 and RD400. The former two are just rebadges of existing products while the RD400 is the successor and replacement for the RevoDrive 350. Older products that are still supported but not for sale are retaining their original naming. The Toshiba brand may still be applied to some consumer SSDs particularly in markets where the OCZ brand is less well-established, so the distinction between brands won’t be as clear as it is for Micron and Crucial. Where the two brands do coexist in the consumer market, expect to see OCZ used as the more enthusiast-oriented brand.

In addition to renaming the SSDs, several of OCZ’s other trademarks are being replaced with more mainstream and mundane names. The OCZ SSD Guru software is now the OCZ SSD Utility and the ShieldPlus Warranty is now the Advanced Warranty Program, but both are functionally equivalent. It does appear that going forward the Advanced Warranty will be offered in fewer countries (or else OCZ drives will be sold in fewer countries), but no existing warranties are being dropped. The new OCZ web site lists fewer supported legacy products than were listed at the time of the Toshiba acquisition as still eligible for the full original warranty term. OCZ has assured me that drives like the original Vector that are still within their original warranty period are still supported, so it appears that Toshiba is just trying to avoid mentioning on their site the pre-acquisition OCZ drives that used a competitor’s NAND.

The future of OCZ’s enterprise products is less certain. Intrepid, Saber and Z-Drive products are still supported but are no longer for sale. It’s likely that Toshiba hasn’t entirely decided what to do with those product lines but if they reappear in some form they will be under the Toshiba brand with different names. Likewise, any OCZ enterprise SSD projects that haven’t made it to market yet are now Toshiba enterprise SSD development projects. This area in particular might be more likely to see cancellations due to overlap between OCZ and Toshiba efforts, but we are unlikely to get much information about such inner workings from Toshiba.