 | Review: Plextor PX-712A (IDE) Reviewer: Dennis Provided by: Plextor Europe Firmware: version 1.01 Manufactured: April 2004 TLA: #0001 |
The Plextor brand name is a well known name in the optical storage industry.
The company has been active in this industry for years and has built up a good
reputation with their CD-ROM and CD-RW drives. Since January of last year
Plextor has begun to produce DVD writers too. Their first drive was the Plextor PX-504A, a drive that supported the DVD+R/RW format
only.
About seven months later Plextor launched their second DVD recorder, the PX-708A, which supported both DVD+R/RW and DVD-R/RW. This
drive was and still is a big success, partially because it was the world's first
DVD recorder to support 8x DVD+R recording.
Last month Plextor launched their third DVD recorder, the Plextor PX-712A, at
which we're going to take a look at in this review. As the model number of the
drive suggests, it supports 12x DVD+R recording speeds, a world's first. Besides
this high recording speed for DVD+R the Plextor PX-712A supports other high
recording speeds such as 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD±RW, 48x CD-R (which is another world's
first for a DVD recorder) and 24x CD-RW. The drive can of course also be used to
read media with and it does so at up to 16x for DVD-ROM media and up to 48x for
CD-ROM media.
These specifications sound impressive, especially when you keep in mind that
the Plextor PX-712A is Plextor's second drive (besides the PlexWriter Premium) to support advanced technologies such as
SecuRec (create password protected CDs), GigaRec (record up to 1GB on a standard
700MB CD-R) and Q-Check (advanced error measurement tests). We'll of course get
back to these technologies later on in this review. But first, let's start with
some general information of our review system.
Test Machine:
For the tests we'll be using the following configuration:
Hardware:
The Plextor DVD recorder was hooked up as Master to the secondary
IDE-controller and identifies itself as "PLEXTOR DVDR PX-712A". DMA
(Direct Memory Access) and autorun were enabled for every
device.
Used Software:
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:
- Ahead InCD v4.2.4.1
- Ahead Nero Burning Rom
v6.3.1.10
- Ahead Nero CD-DVD
Speed v2.20
- Ahead Nero InfoTool
v2.21
- Kris Schoofs'
DVD Identifier v3.2 build #2
- Plextor PlexTools
Professional v2.13
look at the drive's package, the drive itself and its specifications and
features.
