Customer Reviews

Plextor PX-716A - DVDRW (dual layer) drive - IDE ( PX-716A/SW )

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I've owned many optical drives over the years, several of them Plextor. I'd always been happy w/the Plextors, but I never had one fail on me, so I'd never had to deal w/the company. I bought the 716A online (not at Amazon) back in January. That online merchant's policy was that any warranty problems had to be dealt with directly w/Plextor. I didn't think much about that at the time, since I'd always had such good luck w/my Plextors.

Within a week, the 716A I'd purchased began to fail. Within 2 weeks, it would no longer read or write a disk. Even tho this problem w/this particular drive has been pointed out on several forums, Plextor tech support has a very rigid diagnostic routine they insist you perform. Once I'd proved to them that yes, the drive was indeed bad, they gave me a "ticket number" that I had to use to then contact their RMA dept.

I submitted the online form I was told to fill out, and received an RMA # w/a lot of boilerplate rules for returning products. One of the rules was that the customer paid shipping costs to Plextor (Plextor pays them back to the customer). Surely, I thought, since the drive went bad after only a week, and since the company makes such fine products, they would be happy to pick up the drive, since it was so obviously defective.

I was wrong. Not only would they not pay the shipping to them, they would not reply directly to my emails--they just kept sending me the boilerplate rules over and over, no matter how I begged or pleaded in my emails for them to respond. I assume they wanted me to read the part that said the customer pays shipping to, "No Exceptions" (their words).

So, defeated, and holding a useless $130 drive, I reluctantly ponied up the $11 shipping via UPS (the least expensive secure method that can be tracked; Plextor recommends against using U.S. Mail).

From the time of my first email (which had actually gone unanswered) to when I had the replacement drive in my hands, was nearly 2 months.

But wait, it gets better. The replacement drive, which was supposed to be new, has now failed. And more quickly than the first one did, in under a week of regular use. It has failed in the exact same way as the first one.

As Plextor tech "support", and the RMA dept especially, are not very helpful or sympathetic, I have written an email to their Public Relations dept., describing my situation. I have yet to hear back.

You will read many glowing reviews of this drive. And I want to say that, yes, when it worked, it was the fastest DVD drive I've yet used. But from my (admittedly unscientific) survey of user comments on other forums, it appears about 10-20% of these drives may be bad. Or it may just be the twenty or so reviews I read about the problem. Or it could be just one group of drives--both my bad drives had a manufacture date on the sticker of Dec 2004. (Also an oddity: the one I bought in January had a reasonable manufacture date of 12/04, but the one they sent me in March, presumably, should have had a newer date.)

At this moment I am out the $130 for the drive, plus the shipping costs, and I have no doubt that, given their initial attitude, Plextor would want me to pay shipping again to send the second bad drive back. I seriously doubt I'll ever deal w/this company again.

My final recommendation: if you must have this drive, be sure to purchase it from a dealer to whom you can return it in 30 days. Unless you install the drive immediately and torture test it for several days, it could take as long as a month to go bad (if it's going to do that). And then you're stuck paying to have Plextor take it back.

I recently bought a plextor 716a online (not amazon) back in march of this year. It worked beautifully.. when most of my friends were burning at 4x or even 8x mine was blazing at 10x-16x. Then all good things come to an end. Mine messed up, it wouldn't read write nothing. I called plextor support (they were very nice and helpful) but i had to do this unbelievable self test to let them know how many blinks and what color to determine what was wrong with it. After that i waited about 2 weeks to get the other one (last night to be exact). Man, was i excited to get the "new" one. I say "new" because the date on the thing was nov. 2004 and the original was oct. 2004. You would have thought it would have said june or july 2005. Well installed it. Burned beautifully and now today (one day later actually about 16 hours later) i am calling them up again because it gave out. This time the gentleman told me that the blinks (2 amber ones) meant something that only they know and that it wasn't published in the manual. Why wouldn't it be in the manual. Anyhow, he has arranged for the UPS man (because they only use UPS and this time i dont have to pay) to come by the house and pick it up in the original box (too bad i threw out all the packaging). I should get my "new"/ third one in about 1 1/2 weeks. Man, talk about a waiting game.

If you are interested in buying one be prepared for things to happen... nothing is perfect not even this drive

After a month of light usage, the drive started to fail, now it is completely unusable and there is not any way to return it for another drive since I've lost the purchase receipt. Paying 130$ for copying 10 DVD'S is two much. Don't buy it

I got this drive because I had used another Plextor cd-rw drive and I had been very satisfied with it.

This DVD drive started giving me problems less than two months after purchase. I kept calling customer service and they seemed to think it was a software problem or a computer configuration issue.

Finally, the drive stopped working altogether --- I had had it for maybe 3 months. Plextor customer service made me do extensive diagnostics on it, which took over an hour and then they finally gave me a return authorization. It cost me about $20 to return it with insurance.

They returned the drive to me in a few days, and they refused to fix it. The reason they gave was a tiny paper seal on the bottom of the drive was broken, which they claimed "voided the warranty". I spoke to several of their representatives saying I had no reason to open the drive and that this flimsy seal must have torn when I tried to remove it from the computer bay. After all, why would I have removed the seal myself if the drive was still under warranty?

They were unmoved.

I am sure they could have determined if the drive had been opened or tampered with but they refused to budge. I even wrote to the HQ in California but I never received the courtesy of a reply.

As a result, I will never again use a Plextor product. I bought a Sony drive as a replacement. I was cheaper, came with better software and in 4 months I have had no problems with it.

Check out the seal on the bottom of any new drive and take steps to protect it from being broken or you may end up having similar problems.

I gave it two stars because if the drive worked as advertised it would be a very good product, even if a bit more expensive than other brands.

I was using Yamaha CD burners for years, without a SINGLE problem. Both of them are still going strong. I decided it was time to get out of the CD era and into DVD's. After looking over many different burners, I choose Plextor. They have been around for a long time and they were considered to be the best of the best.

I was satisfied with it. It did exactly what I wanted it to do: burn DVD's. Except, some of the DVD's wouldn't play right in some of the DVD players. They would stop playing at a certain point. Always the same spot for the same DVD. At first, I chalked this up to "older players can't play burned DVDs". Looking at the burned side of the disc, I noticed a "bright" track on the disc. Very thin, but it was there. After using a buddies portable DVD player to watch where the laser stoped and seem to have problems, it was exactly where that "bright" track was. I called Plextor and recieved an RMA very quickly. I shipped the old drive back and within a week, I recieved my new drive. All was good.

Until recently. The problem has shown up again. I have contacted Plextor and am waiting for their responce. The one they ship back I may sell on ebay and put the money twords a different DVD burner.

As others have mentioned this was also not my first plextor drive, and I have always had great luck with plextor, Until now. I actually had this drive for a few months and used it moderately, about 30-40 dvds/cds burned with it before it stoped reading or writing cd's. It would still read and write DVD's(looking back on this I should have left well enough alone, but silly me I thought it should be able to do both since that is what I paid for. I called plextor, jumped through the flaming hoops like a good circus monkey, received an RMA number and paid my $8.00 to ship it back to them. 4 and 1/2 weeks later I received my replacement drive. Due to their quick **cough** turn around time I had put my old 8x dvd burner back into my computer, and since I was feeling lazy, and didn't feel like unhooking all those cables from my computer right away to put it back in when I received the replacement drive, I put it on a shelf in the Den and resolved to get to it soon. That was probably my mistake, however it is the next part that made me decide I would never buy anything else with the plextor name on it as long as I live, and I encourage everyone I know and sometimes even random strangers walking down the street to do the same. I finally got around to putting in the replacement drive about 3 weeks after I received it back from them, then I had to go out of town for a few days and didn't have a chance to use it before I left. When I got back into town I decided to copy some home movies to dvd and got everything set up and going, made the first dvd and was happy, for a few more minutes. Started making another copy of the same dvd I had just burned for a family member when halfway through the second dvd the burn process failed and I got a lovely drink coaster. I wasn't happy but tried to put another disk in to try it again, and it didn't recognize the disk, so I tried a different disk and again nothing. This time the drive would not read or burn either cds or dvds. I unhappily called plextor and went through the flaming hoops routine again however with a bit of an attitude this time, got another RMA number and explained that this was the second time this drive had failed and complained about having to pay shipping back yet again. THe nice **cough** gentleman on the phone told me if hadn't been more than 30 days since I received the replacement they would pay for shipping both ways. This made me happy for a moment until I remembered not installing it right away. I had to go back to an email and check the tracking number to see when I had receive dhte replacent drive. Turned out it had been delivered 32 days before. Guess what? Sucks to be me, I had to pay shipping back yet again, so now this drive has cost me $16 more than the original purchase price and my guess is I'll get the replacent for the replacent the day after the warranty expires.

Bought this unit for Christmas. Had it installed by computer tech. Software splash page would appear but clicking on links crashed machine. Reinstalled, uninstalled and reinstalled no luck. Computer tech installed it on his personal machine same result. Both machines have latest motherboards and exceeded the minimum hardware requirements. Contacted tech support and have been passing emails for over a month now with no help from Plextor. Went and bought ASUS burner for half price and installed perfectly and runs great.

Okay, so at least the other reviewers got a month out of their Plextor 716A. I didnt get a day out of it. I purchased it in February, but didnt unpack it and install it until August. Everytime I tried to burn a cd, i would get an error message. I tried using Roxio, and another CD writing program, and i would get errors from both. I tried switching the jumper from Cable Select, to Master, and then to Slave, nothing. Since I'm fairly familiar with technical issues (by no means an expert), first I refered to the manual that came with it. No luck, they dont give you anything to go on in their "troubleshooting" section. So then I figured I'd go online, and again the online "support" and "Troubleshooting" is of zero help.

I did NOT buy it from amazon, but I should have looked here for the reviews first, and I definitely would not have purchased it! I wont buy a Plextor again...

I can't believe how POOR Plextor support is. You would think that they would have an answer for a drive that does not read ANY cd's (music, data, games, etc.). I e-mailed tech support and there FIRST response was to RMA the drive!! This means shipping the drive back to Plextor at my expense! And then waiting forever to get a USED drive back! That's right, if you RMA a Plextor product you will get a REFURBISHED product back. These things have been RMA'd thousands of times so there is obviously a serious flaw in their hardware profile. I will NEVER purchase another LOUSY Plextor product.

I've had this drive for perhaps a little over a year now. The drive performs very well when it comes to DVD+R, DVD-R, and ripping DVD-ROM. CD's on the other hand are another story. The drive I've got frequently produces coasters when burning faster than 12x, even when using 48x certified media. I decided I could live with it because I rarely burn CD's these days and my trusty old Plextor PX-504A handled CD-R burning very well (I run dual burners). Still, for nearly 1.5x-2x the price of competing models, the PX-716A should blow the doors off the competition in every category, not just DVD. One last nitpick is that this drive seems very sensitive to scratches (even very minor ones), dirty discs, or blank media of less than perfect quality. Using the newest firmware, version 1.09, with a spool of TDK 48x CD-R media has, so far, yielded failure rates around 1 in 4 discs even when burning at much lower speeds than rated. The Fuji-Film CD-R's that I've used are only failing at a rate of around 1 in 8 at the same burn speeds.

Shortly after putting in my 716A, the old 504A stopped reading all DVD media after 2 years of heavy use. I returned the 504A to Best Buy where I bought it and traded up to the newer 712A. That drive died completely after 6 months or so. Wouldn't even power up. Replaced that drive with a Pioneer DVR-110D. Six months later, the Pioneer drive stopped reading all CD media in the middle of a Windows installation. I'm currently working on a resolution with Pioneer's tech support people to hopefully get it replaced under the 1 year warranty.

I'm growing tired of replacing drives every 6 months in my box. I just want something that will work reliably for all media that it is supposed to support and work at the rated speeds. I think my next drive will be an NEC 3550A or perhaps something from Lite-On.