Plextor has announced its entry level S2 series SSDs that will contain TLC NAND Flash from SK Hynix and a SMI controller. The drives will become available in capacities of 128GB, 256GB and 512GB in a 2.5" and M.2 form-factor.
The drives are marketed as "Love it! My first SSD" and according to Plextor's marketing they should offer the best "cost/performance" ratio. However, the Japanese SSD manufacturer hasn't disclosed any pricing details, so the future has to tell.
While there isn't much known about the price of the drives, there isn't a shortage of technical information. The S2 series will feature a SM2258 controller from Silicon Motion and 16nm TLC NAND from SK Hynix. The same combination of NAND and controller can also be found on Intel's 540 series, however Plextor has developed its own firmware for the S2 SSD.
Where Intel uses over provisioning on its 540 series to extend durance and maintain performance, Plextor utilizes the full capacity of the NAND. This is made possible by the use of PlexNitro, Plextor's SLC NAND caching solution. The drives also contain some DRAM cache, the 128GB version has a cache of 256MB DDR3 RAM, the 256GB and 512GB drives come with 512MB DDR3 RAM for caching.
Plextor specifies that the drives are able to achieve sequential read speeds of up 520MB/s and sequential write speeds of up to 480MB/s. Random reads are specified at up to 98,000 IOPS and random writes up to 78,000 OPS.
The drives come with a 3 year warranty and should become available in October. Plextor has not disclosed any pricing information.
