Does reset do the same thing as shutting off the power to this device and turning it back on?
Yes this is normal. If you do a hard reset(random powerup) you can be pretty sure that the buffer will be some garbage. If you do a soft reset the contents should be the same as before. Sram is designed to behave that way. But it depends on the design of the architecture. If the internal hardware is desinged in such a way that, on receiving a reset signal, the power to the RAM to be removed. Then, in that case, the contents of the RAM will be cleared on the reset.