Read operations are performed in a multi-plane memory device. A state machine interfaces an external controller to each plane of memory cells to allow reading from selected word lines in the planes. In one approach, different types of read operations are performed in different planes, such as a multi-level cell read, e.g., a lower, middle or upper page read and a single-level cell (SLC) read. When the read operation in one plane uses fewer read voltages than another plane, the read data can be output early from the one plane while read operations continue on the other plane. The external controller can also command a cache release for one plane after outputting data from the caches of another plane. Read voltages can be set for each plane in a respective set of registers.