Customer Reviews

Sony DRX710UL DVD+R Double Layer External DVD+-RW Drive (16x)

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I purchased this product about a week ago, since I was looking for an external DVD burner to hook up to my laptop (IBM T-30 w/pcmcia firewire card) in order to consolidate a lot of cd's that I had lying around.


Out of the Box:
The first thing I noticed was the size of the burner, which is actually pretty big compared to everything else on my desk, but with the verticle stand, it's not a problem. The drive itself looks like a high quality product, Sony even went the extra step of giving it a gloss finish.

Included in the box is a USB cable, and a Firewire cable with a 4 pin connector on one side, and a 6 pin on the other (the back of the drive has both a 6 pin firewire connector, and a 4 pin, so if you only have one type on your computer, you can just flip the cable around). Btw, Sony calls the firewire cable an "i.LINK" cable for some reason. Also included is a packet with the warranty, and seperate packet for the manuals and software CD.


On the software CD:
Nero Burning Rom 6-SE
InCD 4
Nero Vision Express 2
Nero BackItUp
Nero Showtime


Installation:
The drive is purely plug and play, there are no drivers on the CD at all. Connect it by either the firewire or USB cable and it recognizes it very quickly. After the drive showed up in my computer, I popped in the software CD and installed the Nero software suite. I'm very happy that they included Nero, considering it's one of the best CD/DVD burning programs out there.


Performance:
I went out and bought a generic brand of 4x DVD-R's to test the drive out, put in Kill Bill Vol 2, and started burning. Even at 4x, the entire process took 15 minutes. I was anxious to try out the Dual Layer feature, so I went out and bought a pack of DVD+R DL's. These things are not cheap, each one retailing around $10 a disc. After deciding on what to back up, I went to burn it. It took a bit of time, since it's burning at 2.4x, but it went flawlessly. I was a bit nervous, since I would've been annoyed (to say the least) at coastering a $10 disc.



In conclusion, I am extremely satisfied with this product. I can't find a reason not to give it less than 5 stars. It's easy to setup, it's easy to use, and it performs like a dream.

The machine works wonderfully, looks good; but people should be aware of a small, potent problem with the software. If you have (say) an internal CD-RW drive, and you're running Nero for it, this Sony DVD burner comes with its own version of Nero that wipes out your other version. And, this version of Nero will REFUSE to recognize a non-Sony burner of any sort. So, that's the end of your internal CD-RW drive! I bought this Sony for an office, intending to move it from machine to machine as needed, but this awful feature means I can't use it that way, because I would end up incapacitating everyone's CD burners. So, I have to keep it dedicated to a single machine. Might as well have bought an internal! What a design flaw, in an otherwise wonderful device! Whether or not this issue is of immediate concern to you, you really ought to be aware of it before you buy the machine.

Paul (review below) did such a fine job that I only have a little bit to add. First I want to add that my initial experiences with this DVD burner have surpassed all of my expectations. The Nero software they provide is excellent; the DVD burner is pleasure to use. And FAST too.

I want to mention that Sony has two updated BIOS releases that takes DVD-R writing speeds from 8x to 12x. There are other advances also. And the BIOS update is so easy to do.

(...)

There are two updates. One update (says it is for the 710A but the DRX-710UL has a 710A inside so it applies here) updates media compatibility and improves writing speeds. That update is named 710A_BYX2.EXE.

The second update is for us users that connect to the computer with a USB cable. That update is FWUPDATE.EXE and it resolves some issues with WinXP SP2 communications on the USB interface.

I have now done both updates on my burner. I ran FWUPDATE.EXE first, rebooted and then with the USB interface issues all updated, I ran 710A_BYX2.EXE.

The 710A_BYX2.EXE update paused for what seemed like a minute or two at the 100% progress mark, but just be patient and eventually you should get the "inquiry" message followed by the "update was completed successfully" message and an invitation to reboot.

Upon reboot after the 710A_ByX2.EXE update, WinXP saw my DVD Burner as a new device (again).

All in all, it is pretty slick. But, of course, proceed at your own risk after printing out and carefully following the provided (on the web-site) instructions for each BIOS.


I've been burning with Fuji (Taiyo Yuden) 8x DVD +R and -R as well as ProDisc 8X DVD-R and it simply couldn't be easier.

All,

PROS...

This a good burner, second only possibly to the Plextor. The software couldn't be easier after all the updates are in place.

Now the CONS...

Make sure you get all the updates from the NERO web-site. There are 6 major updates. The drive is rather big and kind of noisy at times. It would have been nice if they had put a bigger buffer in, say 8MB. It's still a little bit expensive compared to other burners on the market. My burned DVD's work okay on all my computers so far(Toshiba, Dell, Gateway) and on my Sony DVD player but not on my Panasonic DVD player ?.

I am on my third drive now, thanks to the first two breaking. Sony sent me the 720UL as a replacement for my 710UL, but it's the same drive with the exception of some faster burn times and the 720UL doesn't support MAC OS.

The Sony Service Center in Manning, IA gave me a huge runaround... first they agreed to pay for return shipping on the second defective drive. Then they called me back 2 hours later and refused to pay for the shipping. What a joke.

Good drive when it works, but may god have mercy on you if it breaks after the return period.

The DVD burner connected very easily through USB, was immediately recognized by WinXP, the software installation was fine. I was beginning to feel good. However, whenever I burned a DVD (I tried 4 different brands, some R, some RW etc...), several files would contain errors, and would be completely unreadable. The burning process moreover does not detect this: one needs to verify the data written to check and find these errors. Moreover, the firmware update just does not work on my machine, pardon, machineS. Completely standard Dell machines, all latest WinXP and drivers, good CPUs (3Ghz and up), lots of memory, big hard-drives. I called customer service to try to solve the problem. First of all the average waiting time to get to a technician was about 30 minutes. The rudeness and the plain lies these guys give you are amazing. To make a long story short, I had to call 3 times. First guy: oh, "of course it doesn't work, you have EasyCD creator installed!". Ok, I buy it, I go through the (painful) uninstallation process of Roxio's software. No problems solved. Second guy: "Oh, of course it does not work, it requires 10Gb of free hard-drive space! It's written on the box". Plain lie: on the box it says you need 10Gb for NeroVision (for burning videos), but only 1Gb for Nero. Quarrel (they are tough!) with the guy who could not care less about the fact I got him lying, or that the product description is wrong. Ok, patiently I freed up 10Gb from hard drive, try again, exactly same problem. The only thing they could offer in the end was a replacement. I got perhaps relative lucky because the replacement will be a 720, not a 710, since 710 is not manufactured anymore (wonder why?). Notice I tried this on two different machines (one laptop and one desktop), with identical results.
Other lie: I noticed, as somebody else here, that the Nero software provided writes only on Sony drives: so if Nero is really the only software that should be installed because of conflicts with Roxio (et al.?), you will never be able to use your own CD drive to burn CDs. How ridicolous is that???? The technician said this is because I had both software(s) installed, but that was another lie.
The incompetence of these guys is beyond belief. If the new drive will not work, I hopefully will get a refund through my credit card. You know, the technician even said that that is not possible, credit cards companies do not do that (LOL).

I just got this at OfficeDepot for USD 229, with an additional USD 30 mail-in-rebate.
It has worked wonderfully. I use it with a Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301 (Pentium 4, 2GHz, 512 MB of RAM) and the firewire connection. Have not tried it with USB 2.0.
Mind you, I have NOT installed the software that came with the burner, but use generic software instead. So far no problems at all. For burning, I have tried both Maxell+R and Memorex+RW, no broken discs. Burned +R and +RW play perfectly in my Philips DVP642. A great buy!!

I bought one in Nov 2004. Serial Number 5004653. 3 weeks ago, March 2006, 1 year and 3 months after the purchase, it was broken. It can't read data from media. I contacted customer support and heard it costs $19.95 to diagnose, and $150 to fix it. Can you believe this????!!!!

When I bought it, it was $295 in Circuit City, and just after 1 year, it is broken! DON'T BUY THIS PRODUCT! DON'T BUY SONY! I have a SONY media center PC(VGC RA820G) that I bought 8 months ago, but one of its DVD drives was also broken several months ago.

I have been a big SONY fan, trusting them for more than 25 years, but not anymore. SONY is no better than other brands. It's actually worse in computing devices field.

Don't waste your money on a SONY product like me.

I bought drx710ul 3/5/05 at Costco, because i have a laptop without dvd burner.
I burned my first dvds on phillips 2.4x dvd disk
I can play them on my laptop and my sony dvd player, but I can not play them from my 2 other dvd players
Yet the dvd commercial movies I have can be played on all 3 of my dvd players
I am glad I don't have to buy sony dvd disks, and then burn my home videos on them.
Sony has to be able to do better than this
This dvd burner is still not up to my expectation
maybe try drx720ul-next model up

This product does not work with the software Sony provides (Toast 6 Lite). You need to get Toast 6 Titanium that will cost you another $99. Once you get Toast 6 it works fine, but be careful what type of DVD-R you're using. It works fine with Fuji and Imation dual layer (probably Verbatim as well) but it doesn't recognize Memorex.

May 3, 2006 UPDATE

It' doesn't work with cheap Fuji either (pack of 50), so it's not a matter of the company that produce the DVD-Rs, it's rather the quality of the DVDs. Funny thing is that I gave my cheap Memorex and Fuji DVDs to a friend and they work fine on internal burner (Windows)!