As a leader in the industry, we've come to expect a lot from Plextor. With each new drive, they raise the bar, offering new features and ever faster reading and writing speeds. As you can imagine, I went into this review expecting a lot from Plextor's new "Super-Multi" drive. While the PX-750A's DVD-RAM support was a welcome addition, its questionable writing quality and high media requirements kept it from getting top marks in our review.
Like the BenQ drive it's based on, the PX-750A can write to DVD+R and DVD-R media at 16x. At this speed, it took the drive a little more than 6 minutes to write an entire 4.7GB DVD. Plextor's new DVD writer also did pretty well in our rewriting tests, turning in some respectable times with DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM media. Writing to DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media wasn't a problem for the PX-750A either. While not nearly as fast as some of the other drives we've tested, it was able to write 8GB of data in less than 21 minutes.
With a drive like the PX-750A, writing quality and media compatibility are just as important as speed. Unfortunately, finding DVD±R media that would work at 16x was not an easy task, even with the latest firmware. Also keep in mind that if you want to write to DVD+R DL media at 8x, you will need to buy media rated at this speed. Writing quality was also an issue with the PX-750A as we saw high PI/PIF rates and even some PO Failures with a number of discs. Hopefully, Plextor can address this in a future firmware update.
The PX-750A also performed fairly well in our DVD read tests. While its seek times were a little higher than I would have liked, the drive was able to read single layer data and video DVD-ROM's at speeds near 16x. Reading recordable media wasn't a problem for the PX-750A either. In our tests, it read DVD±R discs at 10x and both DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at 8x.
When it came to reading CD's, the PX-750A did not perform as well as expected. As you saw in our tests, the drive had a hard time reaching its rated speeds when reading both data and audio CD's. The PX-750A's CD writing performance was also a mixed bag. While it held its own fairly well when writing to CD-R media, its CAV writing method put it at a serious disadvantage in our rewriting tests.
Plextor's new "Super-Multi" drive also has its share of features. To prevent buffer underruns, the PX-750Ahas a 2048KB buffer that is backed up by some sort of buffer underrun technology. The drive also includes support for the Mt. Rainier format and can set the book type of DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL media. Keep in mind though, that like the PX-740A, the PX-750A lacks many of Plextor's more advanced technologies like Q-Check, GigaRec and Autostrategy. Last but not least, Plextor tops all of this off with a great software bundle containing Roxio's Easy Media Creator suite.
At this time, Plextor has not announced when the PX-750A will ship in the US and Canada. In fact, at this point I question whether or not they will. From what we've seen here, they might be better off waiting and introducing a "Super-Multi" drive based on the BenQ DW1670 or, better yet, developing their own.
| Plextor PX-750A 16x DVD±RW |
|
| Features: Installation: Performance: |
8 9 6 |
| Overall: | 7 |
Highs:
- Writes to DVD±R media at 16x
- Writes to DVD+RW media at 8x
- Writes to DVD-RW at 6x
- Writes to DVD+R DL media at 8x
- Writes to DVD-R DL media at 4x
- Reads single layer DVD-ROM's at 16x
- Reads DVD±R media at 10x
- Reads DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at 8x
- Features 40x CD-R and 32x CD-RW writing speeds
- Good CD writing quality
- Includes buffer underrun prevention technology
- Supports bitsetting for DVD+R/RW and DVD+R DL media
- Supports the Mt. Rainier format
- Good documentation
Lows:
- Questionable writing quality with some DVD-R and DVD+R DL media
- Cannot write to 8x DVD±R media at 16x
- Had a hard time reaching its rated read speeds
- Problems recognizing discs larger than 90 minutes
- Cannot do write quality testing
- Has a 2048KB buffer
