14 DAY TRIAL // There used to be a time when PCI Express solid-state drives were twice as fast, or more, than SATA options, but it's become harder for that to be the case since SATA III drives began to fully utilize their bandwidth. Case in point, Plextor M6e.
Granted, some overpowered SSDs on PCI Express exist, with transfer speeds of 1.5 Gbps or more, when reading at any rate.
But Plextor didn't want to cause any heart attacks this time, nor to demand too high a payment, so it designed the M6e with 128 GB and a price of €199 / $275.
There are bigger versions too, though, of up to 512 GB at €540 / $750, and they run at 770/625 MB/s (sequential read/write). On that note, random 4K read/write performance is of 105k/100k IOPS.
Looking at it, we can see where the comparison comes from. The SSDs really do run 50% better than the M6S 2.5-inch units (520 MB/s and 440 MB/s sequential, 94,000 and 80,000 IOPS random 4K).
Sadly, Plextor still hasn't shared the ETA (estimated time of arrival) with the rest of us. At least the prices aren't unknown anymore.
Speaking of which, the Plextor M6S come in up to 512 GB and prices of as much as €332 / $460.