Just as we finished our Plextor M5S 256 GB Review, the company's 256 GB M5 Pro (PX-256M5P) showed up at our door. We couldn't get the highly-anticipated drive out of its box and onto our test bench fast enough, particularly since we had just seen the M5S do so well, and despite its position as Plextor's value-oriented model. Needless to say, we started testing with high expectations.

The M5 Pro is a more performance-oriented product, and the hardware inside its chassis indicates that we should expect the M5 Pro to surpass our expectations of previous Plextor drives. For instance, the M5S we reviewed previously uses 25 nm synchronous NAND from Micron and Marvell's 88SS9174-BLD2 controller, while the M5 Pro employs 19 nm Toggle-mode DDR from Toshiba and a more modern Marvell 88SS9187-BLD2 processor.