Solid State Drives (SSD) are getting rather common nowadays as the prices for these components are no longer as prohibitive as they used to be. That being said, the fancier SSDs available on the market aren’t exactly what I would deem affordable either as some of them still fetch a…shall we say “generous” price. Thankfully, the SSD we’re talking about today isn’t one that’ll break your bank as the Plextor S1 is an entry level SSD that comes easy on the wallet.
Design
There is very little to talk about when it comes to the design of the Plextor S1. The SSD itself is very much your traditional 2.5″ SATA-powered storage device that comes with a sticker on top with none of those “gamer” aesthetics that many other components have. This minimalist approach stretches to the boxing of the device as well, considering the fact that all that is included alongside the SSD is the documentation. If you’re looking to fit this into your desktop, you’ll need to source a mounting bracket of your own.
Performance
When it comes to the performance of the Plextor S1, Plextor boasted that the SSD is capable of Sequential Read speeds of up to 510MB/s and Sequential Write speeds of up to 440MB/s. With that in mind, I’ve decided to put the Plextor S1 to the CrystalDiskMark test and the ATTO test. Here are the results of the benchmarks:
As far as results are concerned, the Plextor S1 manages to live up to Plextor’s boast. In terms of real life performance, the Plextor S1 manages to perform well under daily use as well.
So how does the Plextor S1 stack up to other SSDs? For the most part, the read/write speeds of the Plextor S1 allows it to stand on its own, particularly against other entry-level SSDs in the market. However, if you put the S1 up against high-performance SSDs like the Kingston HyperX Savage, the S1 will fall short against it. Considering that the S1 was meant to be a gateway into the SSD in the first place, that really shouldn’t be all that surprising to many.
