Customer Reviews

Primera CD Duplicator, Bravoii 16X DVD/CD-R

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

 

 

I made the mistake of getting a Microboards DX1 instead of a Primera and it was a NIGHTMARE!!! I can't stress that enough. I'm not here to review Microboards, I did that for the Microboards Print Factory, so read up on that review if you want to see what I hated about it.

In the end I sold the Microboards and bought a Primera Bravo II, and I love it. I have gone through over 2000 discs so far without a single hitch. The arm works flawlesly with picking up discs.

If you're in the market for a duplicator, or just a printer model, do yourself a favor and pick up a Primera. They are usually cheaper and INFINITELY more reliable. Get one and just enjoy the piece of mind.

I'm the sole proprietor of a small company and we sell health related DVDs. I used to have to check on my PC every 5 minutes when duplicating, then stick the labels on them individually. Now, I just toss a bundle into the machine, it prints my design right on the disc, then I just remove the finished stack. The automated arm is exciting to watch... the first few times.

It's quiet, inexpensive, and gets the job done w/out headache. Saves me a lot of time!!! Plus, it's easy to operate.

Bravo II works great just make sure you do the alignment everytime you change the ink cartridges. If you do it make very impressive full color lables.

I had trouble with the color ink cartridge that came with the unit. Good thing I has a spare to try. Primera said they would send me a replacement but I haven't seen it yet.

What a great price for a small business. We have clients that want a dozen copies of their final reports with data on optical discs. This device greatly simplifies the process of making multiple copies of discs.

It also allows you to put a great label on the top of the disc. Good looking and very crisp. Not waterproof but very resistant from smudging and such once the ink is fully cured.

We have a problem with the interface on one computer (happens to be the computer we intended to install it on permanently). Customer support worked with us to solve the problem but we are still not able to get the machine to work properly with that one computer. It works great on every other machine I have tested it on so it is some kind of crazy fluke.

Many features we have not tried yet, spanning disks for archive projects, and such. We are crossing our fingers that they will upgrade the robot to burn Blue Ray so we can use it for large bulk archive storage.

By far the best piece of equipment in its price range.

I use 7 of these at work. Between the 7 units, we have put out approximately 28,000 discs in a period of 3 years. They have proven to be reliable and easy to use.

I run a small audiobook production company and on-line store, and have been struggling with whether or not to buy this product for quite a while. Until now, I've been using my Epson printer and manually running discs through one at a time. The quality of the discs created that way was excellent, but it was so time consuming that it could easily take me two hours to create a single 7-disc audiobook to ship to a customer. The Primera Bravo II has sped this process up significantly. Once I've set up the project files (you have to create a separate file for each disc), I just open each project file, add the disc to the print queue, and come back an hour later to a completed disc.

Overall, I've been fairly impressed with the Bravo II. I struggled for two days getting it set up correctly. I am running Windows 7 on all of my machines, and even though it isn't officially supported, I have never had any problems being able to set up unsupported peripherals using the Vista drivers. I was not so lucky in this instance. I was eventually able to get it to work with a little trickery, and now the Bravo II does a very good job. I do hope that Primera begins writing and testing Win7 drivers soon. (They should have been started doing it months ago, but technical support informed me they haven't even started yet.)

The included software is fairly well written, and very easy to use. I would prefer a much more in-depth software experience, and often feel frustrated by the lack of features that would make sense for a piece of hardware like this, such as being able to create a multi-disc project in a single file, collation capabilities, etc. Most of my CD labels are simply .jpg images that I export from Photoshop into the label software, and that works well enough. I also wish the burning portion of the software had the ability to let me burn .ISO files into my project, or gave me far more control over the various options for setting up the CDs (Titling the Discs, Tracks, etc.)

It's nice to "set it and forget it," and I often do that with the device. It's a little slower than I was expecting, but compared to me babysitting it, the Bravo II is still quite speedy. I have noticed a small problem with 1 out of every 3 (or so) discs that it prints...there is a little grease streak on the out edge of the face of the CD that messes up the print. I haven't yet contacted support about this, but if it doesn't clear up soon, I will. I have also noticed that once or twice the printer doesn't print in the correct colors (as though the black cartridge isn't active.) This happens rarely, however, and I'm attributing it to the fact I'm using it on an unsupported OS.

All in all, this is a good product. It does what it advertises. I'm still a little up in the air as to whether or not it's worth the $1,700 I paid for it. If the system had slightly more configurable software, and was built to handle multi-disc projects a little better, then I would easily give it five stars.