Customer Reviews

Plextor INT DVD+R/RW 4X/2X/12X ( PX-708A/SW )

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

This is the DVD/R/RW drive I have been holding out for. It reads & writs all DVD recordable formats except DVD-RAM. And at the fastest speeds possible today. It will even write to DVD+R 4x media at 6-8x! But it will not write to DVD+RW 2.4x at 4x. You have to use DVD+RW 4x media to get 4x RW speeds-and right now those are hard to find! But 2.4x is not half bad for RW.

As for burning CDR/RW, it does the trick and is even faster than my old 24x burner. But be careful! I found out the hard way that burning to SOME media at higher speeds is not ideal for playback in most CD-Audio players. You might begin to hear artifacts such as skipping and clicking on SOME players. But if you play it back on the computer it sounds just fine. Best to keep audio recordings at or below 24x. Note, however, that this drive is limited to 4, 8, 16, 32, or 40x CDR recordings.

The 4-8x recording speeds allow you use VariREC to experiment with the intensity of the write laser to make your recordings more compatible with older, more fussy CD palyers & drives, though I found that using CDR manufactured by Taiyo-Yuden solves this problem most of the time (Taiyo-Yuden CDR are known to often read back with less errors than today's pressed CD's).

PoweREC monitors the recording quality throughout the burning process and will adjust the recording speed to maintain a consistent write quality throughout the disc. But keep in mind, the drive is very good at reading poor discs (more so than most audio players and other CD/DVD rom drives), so that doesn't guarantee that other drives won't experience some problems. You can disable this feature if you wish (but why would you want to do that?)

Missing from the features list is Plextor's GigaREC and Q-Check - available only in the Plextor Premium line of CDR drives. But it can play back discs recorded using the GigaREC feature. I would have liked to have seen those features here, but certainly the drive packs quite a punch anyway.

The only other drawback is the included software. Roxio Easy CD Creator 6.0 Standard. I found this software to be very quirky, especially the Classic interface. It has a habit of locking up the computer, and mine is not the only one, after having read the message boards on the Roxio website. The disc-to-disc copy software worked well, is feature-packed, and had a very nice graphic display during copy. At the time I chucked this software in favor of Nero, there were no updates available to fix the lock up problems. I never tried the DVD authoring portion of the software.

Additionally, Plextor did not include PlexTools - an awesome piece of software that is included with their PlexWriter Premium drives. That is probably because the PlexTools hadn't been updated with DVD capabilities yet, and due to the fact that the drive doesn't support Q-Check--the ability to run a qualitative analysis of the recordings it makes and display the error rates to the user, which is particularly useful in determining whather the brand of CDR you are using is good or bad.

All-in-all, I would be doing a disservice to give this drive anything less than 5 stars-it is clearly the best DVD and CD buring drive on the market. And with the introduction of the 708UF external models (in more than a rainbow of colors to match your computer's case!), there's no reason to consider another drive for all of your DVD or CD burning needs.

Note: Plextor recommends using Verbatim DVD media. For CDRs, they highly recommend Verbatim Datalife+ (not standard Datalife) or Taiyo-Yuden. These will give the best results, with error rates close to that of quality pressed media, especially when burned at 4-8x. Of course, most media will work just fine. I have burned Memorex and TDK 4x DVD+R at 8x speeds.

This is my first DVD burner, but I have done a great deal of research and this Plextor burner is the best DVD burner available today. It is due mostly to the fact that it can burn at 8x for DVD+Rs, but the 40x CD-R burning is a first for DVD burners as well. It has the best burning speeds available for every format so you can't go wrong with this burner.

One thing you will want to do immediately upon installing this drive: update the firmware. Until you update the firmware, you won't be able to burn any DVD-Rs or DVD+Rs unless you are using high quality media. The latest firmware, 1.03, fixes a lot of these issues and it will make sure you burn the least amount of coasters. :) It's a great drive and Plextor is working many of the kinks out as they come up (as all first generation products have) and that is commendable.

So far I have had no problems with this drive that weren't fixed with the latest firmware. I've been using Nero exclusively though, since it's what I prefer. I've heard that some people are having trouble using Nero 6, so you might want to stick with 5.5. If you are looking for the best DVD burner out there, look no further than the Plextor PX-708a.

I did not own previous DVD Burners prior to buying this drive, so I do not have any real life comparisons. However, I did consult websites, such as www.dvdrhelp.com, which had a bunch of reviews. Based on remarks there, I decided to buy this drive to back up my photographs. (Canon 10D RAW files are 6-9MB each).

Installation was simple, but I have prior computer repair experience. However, should be no problem for most. This drive is really remarkable. Not only 8X DVD burning, (works on most 4X media), but also 40X CD-R burning which most other all-in-one drives do not have. The highest I have usually seen while comparison shopping was only 16X.

Burning a full 4.7GB DVD+R disc averages around 7 min 30 sec to 8 min 45 sec.

The included software, I did not really like. Roxio 6 software was not my taste--too user friendly, with too many start-up programs that appear on your taskbar by the clock. I am using Nero 6.0.19 with no problems.

Plextor has always set the bar in quality and performance among optical media drives. This is my 3rd Plextor to date and have been impressed as always. One thing that sets Plextor drives apart is they measure their read and write speeds based on minimum specifications. If they say their drive is 48x, then that is 48x to the outside of the disk (where data is read at a slower rate) unlike many other drive manufacturers.

The reason I always pay the extra money for Plextor drives is that they are THE most compatible drive on the market in terms of system and software. Features that came up in the past such as `overburning' cd's or writing in excess of what CDR's were rated like buring 670mb instead of 650mb to a disk, were supported very early on by Plextor. As well as software such as Nero only allowed you to do it on certain drives, they of course allowed you to do it with Plextor drives.

I really wish I could add something about how their support is, but I've never had to use it. Every drive I've ever installed was a straight forward plug and play and really never had to do anything with drivers (generally included with releases of windows). This is my 3rd Plextor drive, all before it just worked until I felt the need to upgrade to a newer one. They seem to cost ¼ to 1/3 more than cheaper drives, but I prefer to save myself the headache of dealing with issues later.

I highly recommend any optical drive that Plextor makes!

I purchashed this drive when it first came out after reading so many good reviews on it. I have an older Plextor 16/10/40A cd burner in my other computer. It's over 2 years old and has burned 100's of cd's without a hitch. So far with the new 708A I have made movies and backed-up copies of movies. It works flawlessly. I'm running XP Pro with 1 Gb memory 2 120 Gb Western Digital HHD's P4 2.6 GHz. Installation went without a hitch. Use DVD-cloner 2 to back-up movies. You pay more for the Plextor but it's worth it. Have used both TDK and Sony DVD-R's with equal success. I am waiting for more reviews on Roxio Media 7 before I decide to upgrade to that or stick with Roxio 6. Have been using Roxio since ver 5 for my cd's and love it. Not as buggy as 6 was to start with. XP seems to be very fussy about others software. Never had that problem with windows ME.

Was shopping for a dvd burner and a friend who has been burning for a long time strongly recommended Liteon. Went to a good shop (computer central in california) and they said the liteon was hit and miss with a lot of the media. Kept talking to them and asked what media was best. They showed me the bulk discs they use (just packs of 100 media for internal use only on their tech shelf). On each was marked what they had success burning at (for reference later just for the tech's info). They had other brand burners there (memorex, Pioneer etc..) but on each of the bulk media was marked just liteon and Plextor speeds so I knew the choice was one of those two drives. On all of them (like 4 different brands), the plextor consistently shows the fastest burn rate for that brand media. Some were 1x-liteon/2x-Plextor, others 2x-liton/4x-Plextor. That pretty much sold me. This was real info from guys who build hundreds of systems and KNOW by pure experience what works best.

The drive booted with no issues at all (of course) and works great! No bad disks yet (about 15 burns at 4x -R)!

After reading the reviews on this drive it was clear that it was a good one but there are a bunch of comments on the firmware and software that are outdated. My recent purchase had the most up to date version 1.04 firmware, and Roxio EZ CD/DVD version 6.1.1.21 software right out of the box. Many users report having to use Nero for successful copies. Both Roxio and Nero are very capable, and this version of Roxio has fixed the worst of the bugs from 6.0. Both programs suffer from "too much user friendliness" as most programs do these days, with all the clutter on the desktop and taskbar, but this can be disabled and simplified to a very usable package for this very capable drive.

I've been a big Plextor fan for years and in this case I spent extra money for the same specs, just for the Plextor name. It has always meant quality in my book. This drive installs and runs fine under win2k, but it does NOT burn at 8x. Every time I try to use 8x burning it makes a coaster.

I have used 2 versions of dvdXcopy, DVD-Cloner, Roxio and Nero 6, so I can't buy the "it's the software's fault" garbage. The media is 8x Memorex +R. When I knock it down to 4x it works fine, although I just finished making a coaster at 4x due to a buffer underrun, something that this drive is supposed to be immune to. Also, I get the same problem when trying to burn CDs at 40x, which IMO is not really a wondrous feat nowadays. I have to knock it down to 32x.

So basically it works, but for the extra money I paid (200 in Jan '04 - 60-80 clams more than the competition) I expected to get the advertised features. I'm sure someone else will come along and say that their's works fine, hence I'm clueless, but this is my experience. I burn a lot of DVDs too. My ride is an AMD 2200+ with 512 DDR400.

Quality appearance of unit is excellent. However, Plextor RMA product support is severly lacking.
I own the PX-708A, among three other Plextor drives. The unit failed in less than one year. One year is the warranty period. Plextor RMA department has refused to service the unit under warranty. In addition, they state that they no longer repair their products. Their suggestion was for me to go out and buy another newer drive. Bad, bad advertisement!!
The one-star represents product support.

I have been nothing but satisfied with my PX-708A. It's error protection technology seems to function flawlessly, but it does slow down the burning process when enabled. If speed is what you are looking for, then look elsewhere. But if a quality, error-free burn is more important to you than speed, then this burner should please you. I have used Mitsui, Sony, and Iomega discs with this burner with no problems at all.