detail information

Reading performance:

For these tests we will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD's, including audio discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction, this drive supports:

• DVD-ROM : 16x
• CD-ROM : 40x 

Pressed discs:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing the Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD that is close to 75 minutes in length. Below you will see the produced result:

The Plextor PX-750A reached 39.23x, and will reach faster speeds on a full disc. Let's compare the result in the table below:

The Plextor PX-750A was around average reading a pressed CD-ROM.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD. The disc we used was a Ricoh 52X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Moser Baer India. 

As we can see from the above screenshot, the Plextor PX-750A reached 39.12x when reading CD-R. This gives an average read speed of 29.65x.

Now let us compare with the drives below.

Once again the Plextor PX-750A was around average for reading CD-R media, but the seek times were quite slow.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

 CD-Rewritable discs:

Again, we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD; this time we used a Verbatim Ultra Speed (32X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

As we can see above, the Plextor PX-750A is not speed locked when reading CD-RW; now let us compare it to other drives below.

The Plextor PX-750A was one of the fastest drives at reading CD-RW's.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Plextor PX-750A, again we used Nero CD/DVD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is slightly larger than the disc used for the other tests, to be exact it's nearly 79 minutes in length (78:53:31).

The Plextor PX-750A reached 39.98x when reading our Audio-CD, let us compare the result with other drives:

The Plextor PX-750A performed below average reading the Audio-CD.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

For this test we used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the drives Audio extraction performance. As we can see from the screenshot below, the drive supports accurate stream and C2 Error Info.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

 Burst mode

 Secure mode

The drive didn't perform very well in burst mode, and was slower in secure mode.

Advanced audio - DAE quality test:

Before we move on to testing DVD read speeds, we will take a last audio test, and this time we used the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed. For this test we used a CD-R media from RICOH (Thanks to RICOH Europe (BV) for sending us this media).

The extracting quality is excellent, and the drive performed flawlessly with this test, a good result.

DVD reading performance:

Again, we will use Nero CD-Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of DVD discs. The drive should read pressed single layer DVD-discs at 16X.

DVD - DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start with a single and Double Layered DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required to watch DVD movies, it's useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds if you're going to extract (rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

DVD-Video Single Layer

 
DVD-Video Double Layer

The Plextor PX-750A is not RIPLOCKED and reads a pressed DVD-Video at up to 16x for a Single Layer disc, and at 8x for a Double Layer disc.

Now let us test a pressed DVD-ROM disc. For this test we used the 'Plextor PX-716A" install DVD, which is around 4.37 Gigabyte in size.

As we can see from the above screenshot, the Plextor PX-750A reads a DVD-ROM at 16x.

The Plextor PX-750A performed well with our SL DVD-Video test. It was one of the fastest drives at reading a pressed SL DVD-Video disc. With the Double Layer DVD-Video it performed around average.

DVD - DVD+R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD+R and a Verbatim 8X DVD+RW with about 4.4Gb of data. Below are the results:

DVD+R

 
DVD+RW

The read speed is locked at 10x when reading DVD+R media and 8x when reading DVD+RW media. The Plextor PX-750A performed around average when reading DVD+R/RW media.

DVD - DVD-R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW disc filled with about 4.4Gb of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-R

 
DVD-RW

The Plextor PX-750A once again performed averagely when reading DVD-R/RW media.

Overall thoughts:

Overall reading performance is average, we would have liked faster DVD+R and DVD-R read speeds. During our tests, the Plextor PX-750A proved to be a reliable reader.

But now it's time to head on to a more interesting part: Writing CD-R and CD-RW discs…