detail information

The most important thing about a DVD recorder is of course its DVD recording performance. As we already mentioned the Plextor drive is the world's first drive to support 12x DVD+R recording. Besides that is supports 8x DVD-R, 4x DVD+RW and 4x DVD-RW recording speeds. The DVD recorder can of course also be used to record CD-R and CD-RW media with and can do so at 48x for CD-R, another world's first for a DVD recorder, and at 24x for CD-RW media.

As we saw with the Plextor PX-708A recorder, the Plextor PX-712A can write certain DVD media at higher speeds than certified for. This means that the drive can record some 4x DVD-R and DVD+R media at 8x while some 8x DVD+R media can be written at 12x. You can find a complete list of supported media and the supported write speeds over at the Plextor website.

Before starting our tests we should mention a new option that can be found in the PlexTools software. With PlexTools you can now check at which speed the inserted media can be recorded. This information is not based on the software but comes from the drive itself. This way you can check what the certified write speed of a disc is and at which speed the drive will actually record it. Here's a screenshot from PlexTools Professional which shows that the inserted DVD+R disc is manufactured by Taiyo Yuden, is certified for 8x and can be written at 12x by the PX-712A drive:

Another option in the PlexTools Professional software is that you can right click on your Plextor drive and check its status. It will show you which options are enabled and will give you details about the current write and read speed settings of the drive:

Writing DVDR:

To test the Plextor PX-712A's performance when writing DVD media we set up a new DVD-Video compilation of roughly 4400MB in Nero Burning ROM 6 and started the recording process. For the 12x DVD+R recording test we used a Plextor 8x DVD+R disc, which works at 12x in the PX-712A drive (this information is also mentioned on the jewel cases of the Plextor 8x DVD+R media). The ADIP information from the disc we used can be viewed here.

The screenshot shows us that the complete compilation was written in 6 minutes and 21 seconds, almost 2 minutes faster than when recording at 8x. Let's continue with a screenshot of another burn session, only this time we're using 8x DVD-R media. The DVD-R disc was also manufactured by Taiyo Yuden, the ADIP information of this disc can be viewed here.

As you can see the complete disc was written in exactly 8 minutes. We'll take a look at the write quality of the written discs on the next page of this review.

Writing CD-R:

For our CD-R data writing tests we simply set up a new compilation of 700MB using the Nero Burning Rom software. We used the DAO (Disc At Once) writing method. The disc was finalized and set-up as a non-multisession disc. In the screenshot below you can see the burn process completed successfully:

As you can see from the screenshot, the burn process was completed in 2 minutes and 45 seconds. This is the fastest recording time we've seen on a DVD burner, although the difference with for instance the Plextor PX-708A drive, which supports 40x CD-R recording, is not that big (13 seconds). As usual we also tested if the PX-712A drive could write audio discs at maximum speed and if it could read and write CD-Text. As expected, this was no problem.

VariRec:

As we mentioned on page two of our review, the Plextor PX-712A drive supports the VariRec technology. All the new Plextor drives support this technology. Simply said VariRec gives you control over the drive's laser power settings and can help you to make more compatible audio discs. We of course tested the PX-712A's VariRec setting and, as usual, we cannot tell the difference between a VariRec recorded disc and an audio disc recorded at full speed. This doesn't mean that the technology isn't useful since people who own a picky audio player or who are into audio quality will definitely like VariRec.

The VariRec technology also works with DVD media. This means that you can control the drive's laser power to create a disc with higher compatibility/playability. When recording DVD media with VariRec enabled the write speed will be limited to 4x.

GigaRec:

The GigaRec technology was first introduced with the Plextor Premium drive. GigaRec allows you to change the capacity of a CD-R disc by increasing or decreasing the lengths of the recorded pits and lands on the disc. This means you can either record less or more data onto a standard CD-R disc. If you increase the length of the pits and lands you can burn less data to a disc. This can help you to make a more compatible disc, especially when dealing with audio. By decreasing the length of the pits and lands you can of course add more data to a CD-R disc, up to 998MB for standard 700MB disc. To test the Plextor PX-712A's GigaRec performance we used a standard 80 minute Memorex CD-R disc and recorded 103 minutes of audio to it. In the PlexTools screenshot below you can see that the process was completed successfully:

To test if the disc was recorded without any errors we used the PlexTools software to do a C1/C2 error scan. In the screenshot below you can see that the disc was perfectly readable (the average C1 count was 15.2 per second which is of course higher than normal but not too high to cause any read errors):

SecuRec:

The last thing we're going to take a look at it the SecuRec technology. This technology was also first introduced with the Plextor Premium drive and allows you to password protect a CD-R disc. You can use the PlexTools software to activate SecuRec and when you set-up a CD-R recording session you can see that it has been enabled.

Once the disc has been written you can retrieve its contents via the PlexTools software or the free SecuViewer software which can be downloaded from the Plextor website. If you want to retrieve the contents of the disc via Windows Explorer for example you simply won't see anything. If you enter the correct password into the PlexTools software you can see the disc's contents again.