Reading Performance:

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

• BD : 2x
• DVD : 8x
• CD : 32x

CD-ROM pressed discs:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing Creative Blaster Audigy install CD that is close to 74 minutes long. Below you will see the produced result:

The Plextor PX-B900A reads CD-ROM discs at 32x speed.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original Creative Blaster Audigy install CD. The disc we used was a Verbatim 48X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

The Plextor PX-B900A reads CD-R discs at 32x speed.

CD-Rewritable discs:

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

The Plextor PX-B900A reads CD-RW discs at 24x speed.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction:

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 about 78 minutes long (77:43:45).

The Plextor PX-B900A reached 24x reading Audio-CD.

Advanced audio – EAC test:

For this test we used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the drive’s audio extraction performance..

Below is the results produced by EAC:

Burst mode

Secure mode

The drive performed slowly in burst mode and 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 DA media from MMORE (Thanks to MMORE (NL) for sending us this media).

The extracting quality is excellent and we can see that the drive is to slow for 12x and 16x On-the-fly copying.

 DVD reading performance:

Again, we will use Nero CD-Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of DVD discs.

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 (OTP)

DVD-Video Double Layer (PTP)

The Plextor PX-B900A reads pressed DVD-VIDEO SL at 8x, DVD-VIDEO (OTP) at 6x and DVD-VIDEO (PTP) at 8x.

DVD – DVD+R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16x DVD+R and a Verbatim 8x DVD+RW with 4.38GB of data. Below are the results:

DVD+R

DVD+RW

The Plextor PX-B900A reads DVD+R and DVD+RW at 8x speed.

DVD – DVD-R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW disc filled with 4.38GB of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-R

DVD-RW

The Plextor PX-B900A reads DVD+R and DVD+RW at 8x speed.

DVD – DVD±R DL:

For this test we used a Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R DL disc and a Verbatim 4X DVD-R DL disc filled with 7.96GB of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD+R DL

DVD-R DL

The Plextor PX-B900A reads DVD-R and DVD-RW at 8x speed.

DVD – DVD-RAM:

For this test we used a Verbatim 5x DVD-RAM filled with 4.27GB of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-RAM

The Plextor PX-B900A reads DVD-RAM at 5x.

Blu-ray Reading performance:

BD – BD-R SL:

For this test we used a Verbatim BD-R media filled with 22.56GB of data. (Thanks to Verbatim Germany for sending us this media.) Our test results are found below:

BD-R SL

The Plextor PX-B900A reads BD-R Single Layer 25GB at 2x without any issue.

BD – BD-RE SL:

For this test we used a Verbatim BD-RE media filled with 22.56GB of data. (Thanks to Verbatim Germany for sending us this media.) Our test results are found below:

BD-RE SL

The Plextor PX-B900A reads BD-RE Single Layer 25GB at 2x without any issue.

Now it’s time to head on to a more interesting part: Writing CD-R and CD-RW discs…

Features

CD-R/RW Writing performance