Plextor PX-750A 16x DVD±RW/RAM

DVD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 6.6.0.16 andDLA 4.95:

To test the DVD writing performance of Plextor's new drive I used Verbatim 16x DVD+R, 16x DVD-R, 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW media. To get the writing times, a 4.38GB image was burned to our test discs using Nero.

When writing to DVD+R and DVD-R media at 16x, the PX-750A uses CAV. By looking at the screenshots above, you can see that Plextor's new drive starts writing at about 6.7x and accelerates, reaching its maximum speed at the end of the disc.

The PX-750A also features 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds. While the drive uses CLV when writing to DVD-RW media, it uses Z-CLV to reach its maximum DVD+RW writing speed.

Plextor's new drive performed pretty well in our DVD writing tests. While not as fast as the drive from LG, the PX-750A turned in some respectable times with both DVD±R and DVD±RW media.

While Plextor has a list of recommended media on their website, I wanted to see for myself how well the PX-750A worked with some of the DVD+R and DVD-R media currently available. The media types, along with the average time it took the drive to write our 4.38GB image, are listed below.

The PX-750A's media requirements were very high, even with the new 1.02 firmware. The drive wrote to very little of our test media at its rated speed and in a few cases, its OPC technology prevented it from reaching the maximum available writing speed.

So what about writing quality? Testing a drive's DVD writing quality isn't easy. Until now, there were very few options, unless you wanted to shell out thousands of dollars for a certified test machine. Thanks to KProbe, we can test a disc's PI (Parity Inner) and PIF (Parity Inner Fail) rates.For these tests I used a Lite-On SOHW-1673S (firmware JS07) and read the discs at 4x with the PI and PIF ECC sums set to 8 and 1 respectively. For comparison, I also tested the discs on a BenQ DW1640. When combined with Nero CD Speed, the DW1640 is able to report PI Errors, PI Failures, Parity Outer Failures and even jitter levels. For this test, the discs are read at 8x with both the PI and PIF ECC sums set to 8.

So what are "good" results supposed to look like? With KProbe, the PI errors should not exceed 280 and the number of PIF errors should stay below 4. When testing with CD Speed, the number of PI errors should stay below 280 as well. However, because it scans with an ECC sum of 8, a higher number of PIF errors is acceptable, as long as they do not exceed 32. Since POF errors are uncorrectable, we really don't want to see any of them at all.

I also put these discs through a "stress test" by reading them back at 16x with the DW1640. By reading these discs back at this speed, we can see if there are any readability issues caused by the number of errors or high levels of jitter.

The PX-750A's writing quality was pretty good with most of the DVD+R media we tested. In most cases, the PI/PIF rates stayed well within acceptable limits. The only exception being Optodisc's 16x DVD+R media. When scanned with the BenQ DW1640, the PI rates were fairly high near the end.

Lastly, here are some results from our DVD-R test media. Looking at the graphs above, you can see that the discs from Maxell, Taiyo Yuden and Optodisc yielded some fairly good results. Unfortunately, the PI/PIF rates were considerably higher with the media from Daxon and Memorex. When tested with CD Speed, there were also a number of POF errors on these discs as well as the ones from Verbatim.

Something to point out is that while the PX-750A had no problems erasing DVD+RW discs at 8x, it erasedDVD-RW media at only 4x.

To test the PX-750A's packet writing performance I used DLA 4.95. Verbatim 8x DVD+RW, Verbatim 6x DVD-RW and Maxell 5x DVD-RAM media were used once again.

The PX-750A performed pretty well in our packet writing tests. While not the fastest drive here, it turned in some fairly good writing times with DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM media.

Double Layer DVD Write Tests - Nero Burning Rom 6.6.0.16:

To test the double layer DVD writing performance of the PX-750A, I used Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL, Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R DL, RiDATA 2.4x DVD+R DL, Memorex 2.4x DVD+R DL and Verbatim 4x DVD-R DL media. I created about 8GB of random files and directories on my hard drive and then burned them to our test discs with Nero.

Finding DVD+R DL media that would work at 8x was not an easy task. The only media we found that would work at this speed were Verbatim's new 8x DVD+R DL discs. With the other DVD+R DL media, the writing speed was limited to 4x. Even then, Memorex's media failed to complete a successful burn at this speed. For our tests, we had to slow the writing speed down to 2.4x.

The PX-750A wasn't as fast as I had expected when writing to DVD+R DL media at 8x. With Nero, it took the drive 20:50 to write 8001MB of data. If you do the math, this is a good two minutes slower than the drives from the competition. So what about writing quality? Take a look below.

The writing quality wasn't as good as I had expected with Verbatim's 8x DVD+R DL media. When scanned with the BenQ DW1640, the PIF rate was fairly high at the layer change. Unfortunately, the writing quality wasn't much better with the 2.4x DVD+R DL media from Verbatim and RiDATA. While the PI/PIF rates stayed within acceptable limits, they were still higher than we'd like to see. The worst results were with Memorex's 2.4x DVD+R DL media. The PI/PIF rates were not only considerably higher, the large spike at the layer change caused some readability problems.

The PX-750A also features 4x DVD-R DL writing speeds. To test the drive's writing times, DVD-R DL media from Verbatim was used.

With its 4x writing speed, the PX-750A wasn't nearly as fast as the drives from ASUS and NEC. In our tests, it took Plextor's new drive 28:33 to write 8001MB of data. So what about writing quality? Take a look below.

The PX-750A's writing quality was pretty good with Verbatim's 4x DVD-R DL media. The PI/PIF rates stayed well within acceptable limits when tested with both KProbe and CD Speed and, aside from a few small dips, there were no readability problems.

Performance Revisited:

Overall, the performance of Plextor new "Super-Multi" was pretty mixed. When writing DVD's, the PX-750A turned in good times with DVD±R and DVD±RW media, but wasn't as fast as some of the other drives when writing to DVD±R DL discs. Writing quality was also an issue as there were a number of cases where the PI/PIF rates were quite high. Nevertheless, the PX-750A was fairly quick when reading DVD's. In our tests, it was able to read single layer DVD's at speeds near 16x and DVD±R media at a respectable 10x.

Unfortunately, the PX-750A's performance wasn't as impressive when reading CD's. The drive had a hard time reaching its rated speeds and its seek times were higher than we would have liked to see. As a writer, the PX-750A performed as expected. While not the fastest drive we've tested, its writing quality was very good. With all things considered, the Plextor PX-750A gets a 6 out of 10 for the performance section of this review.