detail information
| Posted by | Wendy Collins |
| Posted on | 28/05/06 12:03 |
Positive:
- Good/very good write quality with CD-R media
- Good/very good write quality with DVD±R media
- Supports 18x writing speed on DVD±R media
- Supports DVD+RW/-RW at 8x/6x
- Supports DVD+R DL/-R DL at 10x/6x writing speed
- Can write DVD±R/DL media at higher than its rated speed
- Supports auto Bitsetting for DVD+R/DL (BookType to DVD-ROM)
- Can read Pressed DVD-ROM/DVD-Video SL/DL at 16x/12x
- Supports overburning of CD-R and DVD+R media
- Excellent media diagnostic features
- Excellent DAE quality and performance
- Two coloured LED for read/write
- Very good build quality
- Supports DAO-RAW writing
- Supports Mini DVD-R discs
- Excellent software bundle
- Excellent 2 years warranty
Negative:
- Read speed is locked at 12x for DVD±R media
- Write quality on some DVD+R DL media could be improved
- Write quality on some DVD+RW media could be improved
- 'No Sheep" burner.
Conclusion:
Let us summarize
the most important positive and negative points below:
The main positive points: The Plextor PX-760A has excellent DVD±R writing performance, with its 18x writing speed cutting the time taken to burn this media type. Setting aside the 18x writing speed, the Plextor PX-760A 16x and 12x burns return very respectable writing times.
The Plextor PX-760A can write most DVD±R with very good quality. PoweRec and Auto Strategy assured the best results possible over our range of tested media.
CD-R/RW write quality was also very good, the Plextor PX-760A handling some troublesome media with ease. CD-R/RW media compatibility was also very good.
The supplied software is also of very good quality, with PlexTools Professional supplied with the drive. Also included is the ever popular Nero suite, and Pinnacle suite 8.3 LE. This should provide enough software for the beginner and the more advanced user. There are also trial versions of many other software packages, which will allow the end user a chance to try out software before they buy it.
The build quality of the Plextor PX-760A is of a very high standard, the media tray being very smooth in operation, and the drive itself feeling very well built.
The media testing capabilities of the Plextor PX-760A is second to none, with PlexTools Professional/XL providing the most sophisticated media tests yet seen on a home user drive.
Last but by no means least. The 2 year collect and return warranty (within the EU) is the best around.
The main negative points: There are very few negative things to say about the Plextor PX-760A.
Some work is required to improve DVD+R DL write quality with certain DVD+R DL media.
The Plextor PX-760A performed very poorly in our 'Sheep tests". Let us hope this can be improved with a future firmware update.
To sum it all up, this is what we would say: 'The Plextor PX-760A is a very sophisticated and very good performing drive, and its feature set makes it stand out from the crowd" An excellent effort from Plextor.
We at CDFreaks would like to award the Plextor PX-760A our 'Safe Buy" award
By using our price grabber feature cdfreaks.pricegrabber we found the Plextor PX-760A listed at $99.99 (May 2006).
You may comment on this review below or in this forum thread
Thanks to:
Bell Technology spol s.r.o. - Czech
Republic for providing the media used in this review.
SVP Communications - The United Kingdom for
providing the media used in this review.
Conrexx Technology B.V./RITEK Europe -
The Netherlands for providing the media used in this review.
Medea International - United
Kingdom for providing the Infiniti and HP media used in this review.
Plextor SA/NV (B) for providing the Plextor
media used in this review.
Ricoh Europe - For providing the media used
in this review.
E-Net Distribution - United Kingdom
for providing the media used in this review.
Verbatim
- Germany and United Kingdom for providing the media used in this
review.
For providing the Memorex media used in this
review. Memorex is one of the largest providers
of all types of media for larger parts of the world.
Daxon (Taiwan) for providing
the Daxon media used in this review.
The 16x burn time table used for this review is out of date. I'm not sure why different reviewers seem to use different tables for this purpose but you can see the 16x burn times of the LG GSA-4167B and GSA-H10A from the table used in the H10A review :
http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/272/5
Considering the earlier GSA-4163B (released in 2004)has near identical burn times for 16x burns with the newer LG writers, it means Plextor's 18x burning is a farce!
Compiled data disc's can vary slightly in size from one review to the next, using ones own timings is the only fair way to present the tables.
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