If You Are Thinking About Getting A Plextor Burner Read This!!

Yo-

Plextors parent company - Shinanokenshi - is pulling the plug on Plextor ODD's - saying that they cannot compete and make a profit in the highly competitive market-

So if you really want a Plextor drive - get it now 'cause they will disappear very rapidly-eh!

Reference= www.wesleytech.com

Thanks for the heads up, bigmike. But it does strike me as a bit strange that Plextor can't make a profit when other burner manufacturers seem to be able to do it by making drives as good as Plextors and selling them for less money.

That's what happens to companies that sell inferior products at 2-4 times the cost of their competition.

My Plextors have been working just fine, aside from some 716A drives I own/owned. Premium, 712A, 712UF, 755SA, 760A, 760SA all working great. I'd hardly call any of those drives inferior.

I agree 100%
I've had a 712 for quite a few years, and it still performs fantastically... worth every dollar I paid.
My 760 is the best of the six drives I own (which includes a PIO 111D).
I might add that the Plex's are the only ones that do not need hacked firmware to make work correctly.

In your experience, yes. There are plenty of people with Pioneer drives and the stock firmware that haven't had issues. I don't know that the Plextor DVD Burners are inferrior but they certainly don't carry the same reputation as their CD Burner counterparts, yet they still carry the same pricetag and that is where the problem lies. The Plextor DVD Burners as a whole aren't quite as dependable/reliable as their CD Burners were but people are still expected to pay the premium price for them. I've seen plenty of people on the various forums that I visit who have had issues of one kind or another with the Plextor drives, once again this doesn't mean that they are all junk, it just means that as a whole there doesn't seem to be a justification for that ultra-high price-tag.

Well, I have already heard of this from there.
I'm considering buying a (new) 716 now, as it's the Plextor drive with 16x speed, 8 MB buffer, no (or few) PIF spikes and AutoStrategy, a mix of old and new Plextor... Is this model so troublesome that it MUST be avoided?

I have a PlexWriter 24/10/40A and it's the best CD burner I've ever had. It's still burning like mad after 5 years of use. It absolutely loves Fuji/TY media (which is no surprise) and RITEK CD-Rs. When it comes to Prodisc media though I burn it in a Lite-On CD burner as it seems to have lower PIE rates.

This is the third Plextor CD burner I've owned and have been very pleased with all of them. However, that was then and this is now. I wouldn't spend the extra money for a Plextor today when I can buy both a BQ 1650 and a LO 160P6S. The extra expense just can't be justified.

My biggest beef with the 716A drives is that they aren't good 16x burners. PowerRec often doesn't allow a full 16x burn on discs from the same batch that other burners will, and if you do manage to coax a 16x burn out you're going to have elevated PIE levels at the end of the disc. They really don't overspeed well either, like the 712A or the later drives can. If you're burning 8x TY or MCC at 8x, or 16x TY or MCC at 12x, then the 716A is solid. With that said, I have three 716 drives (A, SA and UF) so make what you will of that

Thanks for the information, Two Degrees.

I don't mind waiting a few seconds more to get a good quality result. Signs point to yes that I'm not going to miss this little gem, as it's also a part of burning history, and the 2 years Plextor warranty still exists (if it breaks too soon)

It's a good sign that you seem to like the 716 series.