Customer Reviews

Plextor EXTERNAL PX-708UF 4X/2X/12X ( PX-708UF/SW )

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Wait. Do not buy this if you want to have perfect DVD copies of movies. If you want that then get the Sony DRX-700UL Double Layer FireWire/USB 2.0 External DVD±RW Drive. That drive allows you to perfectly copy what is called DVD9. DVD9 is what Hollywood uses to make those discs. In the burning world we have DVD-R + R media called DVD5. DVD 5 is around the half the size of a DVD9. This means that when you backup your movies to DVD-R, you need to compress with programs like DVDshrink in conjunction with Nero Burning Rom. Most films can be compressed or DVDs stripped to produce 80% to 100% quality viewing. However on some films they are so big and fast that sometimes the compression can be down as low as 60%. Now 60% compression with DVD Mpeg is not bad but 80% is quite acceptable and 99% of films work great on standard DVD-R. So burning with this hardware is no problem - quality movies is the end result, but if you want pure 100% quality, then be prepared to pay for it with Double Layer technology. Check out the price of the Sony and then check out the prices of the Double Layer DVD Discs. Haha - as you can see the Discs are the catch because they cost a bomb - but anyway you have a right to know that this technology exists and also that it is easier to use (Direct copy; no compression).

Nero Burning Rom comes bundled with this package nd is 99.9% effective but has a tendency to corrupt now again simply because it has a vast configuration system. Nero is a core burning tool. This means that several backup packages out there will actually find Nero on install and use it for burning. One example is DVDshrink that runs Nero in the background while backing up DVD movies on DVD-R. I/O errors with these programs, including DVD Decrypter, are usually the result of a configuration problem with Nero. One example is updating your Plextor firmware. Sometimes this requires you to reinstall Nero. This problem however is the only bug I have found with Nero. Just on the side - I highly recommend Imation, Memorex or Verbatim as relatively cheap good second class media (80% or higher burn success rate). DVD is still in its early days of development and some media is garbage so don't blame Nero or the Plextor if you make coasters (half burned DVD-R Discs that are useless to you) with this software. I also recommend a healthy supply of at least 3 DVD-RW Discs for TESTING your burning so that you NEVER make a coaster and waste money. Okay, now back to Nero. Nero is the most configurable burning tool out there while Nero Express is for those who do not know a thing about burning and works like a Wizard. A word of advice is to stick with the Rom and learn it without using the Wizard. You can choose from burning 12 CD formats and 6 DVD formats, including several variations of each format. There is not a Disc format you can not Burn with this program. The Plextor burners have great hardware based error correction systems and in conjunction with the Nero software make a perfect burn almost every time. Nero also happens to be extremely fast, if not the fastest out there, however fast is also in terms of how fast your burner is, but the software package requires little to no processing before a 8GB DVD is being pulled onto your HD. You can create ISOs with Nero and even use Nero to open up ISOs so you can read the content. There is an amazing amount of free software out there that uses this burner as their base and rightly so. It is the best burning software out there at this time of writing. Also the hardware comes bundled with Pinnacle Systems Media Studio 8 (a full DVD authoring program).

Now to the hardware itself. A USB2 connection at the back means top seed copying to and from the HD. There is a firewire connection if you want to use it and also audio out with volume control. What makes this DVD+-R X 8 (with RW and CD burning capability) speed burner so good is that it is light and yet built like a rock. You can take this anywhere with you although it is about 3/5th smaller than a PS2 so a nice little backpack is ideal for transport. Its error correcting is by far the best out there and I have burned maybe 800+ DVDs without any problems with it today except for bad media.

Pros:

- Take it anywhere.
- Best DVD5 burner out there.
- Not very noisy.
- Nice software bundle.

Cons:

- Price.
- Bit big.

I use the 'Firewire/USB2' version of this DVD-RW and I am absolutely satisfied with the performance and the features of this writer. I use it on both, a Mac (under OS X with firewire) and PC (under Windows XP with USB2) and it works flawless. This is truely 'plug and play' - no installation software is necessary on either operating system. The writing speeds are excellent and I have not burned any 'coasters' so far. It supports all DVD and CD medias and the DVDs (DVD+R DVD+RW DVD-R and DVD-RW) play on all of my DVD players. The picture quality is excellent. The bundled software is very good as well, for Apple (Toast 6.0 lite) and for PC (Roxia software bundle). Also for PC, DVDMAX is included which is a pretty good DVD player (considering the price of this unit is less than 200 dollars, there are hardly any 'DVD player programs' available in the same price range).
This drive comes also with some excellent Plextor tools (e.g. overburning of CDs, error diagnostics, silent mode, and my favorite, drag and drop to disk which makes moving files to and from a DVD very easy). I have been shopping around for a DVD writer for quite a while and I can hightly recommend this unit, especially if you are looking for an external device that works on MAC and PC.

When getting a writer, be it CD or DVD, I always look to Plextor first. They are the leaders, and the rest follow. But when I received the 708UF, I was a bit disappointed. The unit comes equipped with a small fan that emits a high-pitched whine, even when the unit is idle. Since I'm using an external unit just so I can relocate my noisy computer to another room, this is a problem to me. If this won't bother you, stop reading here.

The reason for the fan must be that the unit needs cooling, of course. But why have it run all the time? It should have been real easy to limit it's operation to when the unit is working. Or, even better, get rid of the cheesy plastic box that's housing the 708A and USB logic and use an aluminium box instead. You'd have gotten better durability, looks and cooling in one go.

No, the unit may function very well, but that fan must go.

I'd pretty much say so. This nifty little unit is relatively inexpensive (I got mine from the local big box at a deep discount) and it does NOT make coasters---that is, it doesn't fail partway through making a disc and leave you with a useless hunk of plasttic. I'll admit that I only buy top quality DVD+R discs, but really that's the only way to go anyway.

The unit hooks right up and the driver installed on Win2K just fine. The provided software is a bit clunky, but serviceable. There's plenty of cheap software if you need it (although I found that I could burn CDs and DVDs just fine with what's provided).

Downsides: the unit I got is silver (I'd prefer a more sedate color) and hums slightly when on. That's it.

Although other manufacturers make DVD drives for less, Plextor has the most highly regarded reputation and this drive shows why. The proof is in the burning. After struggling for years with CD burners and software, with a growing collection of junk discs, I've found a piece of hardware that saves hours of "burning it again". Accept no substitutes.

I was looking for a way to back up my DVDs here in the harsh desert environment of Kuwait, and I needed a reliable DVD burner to do it. I knew I wouldn't be able to call up tech support or customer service and wait half an hour to talk to a technician, so I did the research and paid extra for the Plextor, and I'm glad I did. After 4 months it has performed just advertised with no glitches. Installation was easy, no additional drivers neccessary for my Dell 1100 laptop. I have burned several "coasters" (bad disks), but have since determined that the problem was that the disks themselves were at fault and not the burner. An added plus is that the "full" version of Roxio Easy CD/DVD creator is included, which includes features like cross fading. Overall an excellent and rugged product and worth the money. Minor gripe with Amazon in that they won't ship this to an APO address, but otherwise a very good deal.

I did some research into external DVD writers, and everything seemed to point to this drive. I wasn't disappointed - so far, I haven't found anything wrong with it.

Set-up and installation were a snap. The only problem is: I'm going to have to buy real drink coasters now because this drive doesn't make any. Yup, I haven't had any write errors in burning about 25 single-sided DVDs. Speed isn't that important to me, but the Plextor was burning DVDs consistently at 4x, which was plenty fast (I could probably get it to 8x, but the increased speed isn't worth the reliability risk for me). Here are my basic specs: I've been using the drive's Firewire connection to burn video DVDs and back up to data DVDs, using a 1.5 mhz P4 Laptop with Windows XP and 512 mb of RAM.

The wrap-up: This is hands-down the best external DVD writer on the market now, and it's well-priced. I have used its basic functions (single-sided DVD-R and CD-R writing) for 2 months without problems.

I had the Sony Dru 500 burner, had lots of trouble with un finished disks. Took it back and purchased the New Plextor 8x. Wow, what a difference, No more unfinished burns and I downloaded the firmware update and now my Plextor burns at 8x on any 4x +R disk I use. It's womderful! I went from almost an hour to burn a DVD to 8 minutes. I just purched the Plextor external drive too so now I have both. Both burn at 8x on any DVD+R media.

This is a nice-looking unit with DVD RW and CD RW capabilities. I have gotten faster performance by using the included FireWire cable, which incidentally frees up a USB port. It works lying flat or standing on its side in the included holder. I have been able to install the software on multiple computers, enabling me to use this one drive to back them up and swap data between them. I have only begun using the FireWire connection, so I cannot say how it will turn out in the long run. Using the USB connection, I burned a few coasters, but really not bad at all. There are two significant drawbacks: (1) I have had some discs complete and verify just fine -- and then it turns out that I cannot read their data in this drive. I had to use other machines to read them. In one case, I had to try a half-dozen other DVD drives before finding one that would read the disc this unit had burned. That was scary; it was data I could not replace. (2) There is something funky about the relationship between this unit and Windows XP. Nine times out of ten, it is just fine. But once in a while I cannot get Windows to see this drive. Plextor told me to use the reset button, and that worked once, but it hasn't worked since then. I have had to reboot and try again.

Attractive, fast, good quality, relatively portable.

Not as reliable as I thought a Plextor drive would be.

Plextor is a good name. My results with another brand might have been worse. I would probably buy Plextor again, but not this one.

This dvd burner is the best, it is fast, efficient, and I have burned over 50 movies without ANY coasters!!!!!! I have used mostly TDK and Memorex dvd-r and dvd+r both brands of disk working wonderfully.
I started my burning experience with an external TDK 4x burner (440n) and ran into nothing but problems. I only managed to burn two viewable movies out of a stack of 10. The problem mainly being with dvd-r disks, it would encode and start to burn to the disk and then the burner would freeze up and an error message would pop up. I called TDK concerning this and they tried to blame it on my pc at first, after informing them my computer is brand new, they then blamed it on the burner driver and told me to update it on their website, I did however this never fixed the problem and I had accumulated 8 coasters by then. I returned that piece of junk and purchased the 8x external plextor model and I have been in heaven ever since!!! It burns dvd so fast it takes roughly about 15 minutes to burn a two hour movie . It also comes with a stand so you can store it on its side for space saving. Software used to burn movies: Dvd Shrink and Nero v.6

I bought this to replace my already ancient 1x dvd burner in my notebook. It burns in the most popular formats (-r and +r) and is very quick about it. While 8x speed media is difficult to find and expensive, plextor has rigged this wonder to burn at 8x on some 4x media. I have been successful at this with Maxwell media rated at 4x. If your on the hunt for a dvd burner that is fast and easily shared among your home network this is the way to go!