CES 2012: Plextor Makes Its SSDs Even Faster by Outing the M3 Pro Series

At this year’s CES fair, Plextor has announced the introduction of a new series of solid state drives dubbed the M3 Pro that improve upon the specs of the M3 SSD series introed by the company in the first part of December 2011.

The M3 Pro series SSDs use the regular 2.5-inch form factor, but with a new 7mm thin profile, and will be released in three capacities providing 128GB, 256GB and 512GB of storage space.

At the heart of the solid state drives stands Marvell’s 88SS9174 SATA 6Gbps controller which is paired together with toggle NAND Flash memory built by Toshiba using the 24nm fabrication process.

This memory was designed by Toshiba to require low voltages in order to operate, which should decrease the power consumption of the SSDs using it, which together with their thin profile make them a great solution for Ultrabooks.

The Toshiba memory is able to support transmission rates of 133 Mbps and runs a custom firmware with True Speed technology.

According to the specs provided by Plextor, this configuration enables the M3 Pro SSDs to reach sequential read and write transfers speeds of 540MB/s and 450MB/s, while their random read/write performance is estimated at 76,000/69,000 IOPS (input/output operations per second).

In addition to the impressive performance promised by Plextor for its drives, the company also made sure that its SSDs are able to deliver long-term stability.

In order to reach this goal, the company puts the M3 series solid state drives through a series of thorough factory tests, including a 20-hour high temperature burn-in test and other intense usage simulations.

"We are excited to announce the M3 Pro at CES this year. It will be Plextor's fastest and most efficient SSD to date, and with the 7mm height, we now offer a solution for ultra-slim notebook users,” said Kathy Huynh, product marketing manager.

The M3 Pro series solid state drives will be available in February of 2012, but no info regarding pricing was provided.