Plextor PX-708A (DVD±RW)


 

  Review: Plextor PX-708A (IDE)
Reviewer: Dennis
Provided by: Plextor Europe
Firmware: version 1.00 / 1.01
Manufactured: August 2003
TLA: #0000

Plextor has always been a well known brand in the optical storage industry but it took quite a while before they released their first DVD recorder. At the beginning of this year, in January, Plextor announced their first DVD recorder, the Plextor PX-504A. That drive only supported the DVD+R(W) recording format and could write DVD+R media at 4x and DVD+RW media at 2.4x.

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Now, about seven months later, Plextor has released their second DVD recorder and this time Plextor made sure that their drive would be something special. With their new PX-708A drive Plextor has released the world's first 8x DVD+R recorder which means that it's possible to record a complete DVD in less than 10 minutes! Another thing that's interesting is that Plextor has made this drive a dual format recorder, meaning that it supports both the DVD-R(W) and DVD+R(W) formats.

As said, when it comes to DVD+R recording the Plextor PX-708A is the fastest recorder on the planet but its other recording speeds are also very impressive. For instance, it supports 4x DVD+RW recording and 4x DVD-R recording and when it comes to CD media the drive continues to impress with 40x CD-R recording and 24x CD-RW recording. In this review we'll of course put the drive to our usual tests and see how it performs. For instance, is this new Plextor DVD recorder a worthy replacement for your old but trusty CD recorder? Read on to find out!

Test Machine:


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For the tests we'll be using the following configuration:

Hardware:
  • Motherboard: GigaByte GA-7VAXP
  • Processor: AMD AthlonXP 2100+
  • RAM: 512MB (PC2700)
  • GFX: ASUS V8200 (GeForce 3 Ti200)
  • Hard Disks: DiamondMax 40+30GB (7200rpm)
System set-up:

The Plextor DVD recorder was hooked up as Master to the (onboard) secondary IDE-controller and identifies itself as "PLEXTOR DVDR PX-708A". DMA (Direct Memory Access) and autorun were enabled for every device.

Used Software:


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The Dutch Windows XP Professional SP1 operating system is installed on our test machine. We'll be using the following software to perform the various tests:

On the next page of our review we'll take a look at the drive's package, the drive itself and its specifications and features.

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