DVD Burner round-up: Top 16x drives tested

Plextor PX-716A impressions

Plextor is undoubtedly one of today’s leaders in the optical drive market. Founded in 1985 (formally known as Texel), the company currently employees over 4,000 people throughout the world, selling a plethora of different optical drives and digital video converters. In my past reviews, Plextor drives have always adorned close to top honors because of their attention to quality, bundled software, and overall performance. This latest offering is no exception, the PX-716A is a dual layer DVD drive that can pretty much read or write anything you throw at it, minus DVD-RAM.
 

I did not encounter any problems whatsoever with installing this drive. The software included with the drive was very straightforward, and instructions supplied were sufficient (we will briefly touch on the software bundles later on this article).

The drive has a very attractive look, following the sleek lines of its predecessors. The front panel of the unit has a very small activity light, and a small manual access hole up front. I was happy to find a black face plate included, and installing the plate was quite easy. Drive construction seemed solid, the tray was sturdy, and did not require any special attention for quick disk swaps.

Plextor PX-716A DVD-R 16x DVD-RW 4x DVD-R DL 6x DVD+R 16x DVD+RW 8x DVD+R DL 6x CD-R 48x CD-RW 24x DVD-ROM (read) 16x CD-ROM (read) 48x DVD-RAM - Price (click for details) $115

Technical enhancements include (as listed by the manufacturer):

• Double layer - allows you to record up to 4 hours of high-quality MPEG-2/DVD video on a 8.5 GB disc

• Intelligent Recording Technology - supported for recording at high-quality and optimum speed

• AUTOSTRATEGY® - Writing technology for unknown media with uneven quality

• Intelligent Tilt™- Precise laser control via liquid crystal and three-dimensional tilt adjustment for uneven disc surfaces.

• PoweRec® technology - a sophisticated write strategy providing superior quality recording at maximum speed for your chosen media

• Buffer Underrun Proof Technology - prevents buffer underrun errors

Software bundled:

• Roxio Easy Media Creator 7 – award winning software suite which contains full-featured photo, video, music, burning, and authoring applications for Windows XP/2000 only.

• Plex Tools – includes Plextor features like SilentMode, GigaRec, VariRec, and Secure Recording

• Dantz Retrospect – 30 trial version of this back-up utility

Select DVD Burner round-up: Top 16x drives tested Plextor PX-716A impressions NEC ND-3520A impressions LG GSA-4163B impressions Software pictorial: Nero and Roxio suites Benchmarks: CD and DVD read tests Benchmarks: DVD write and rewrite tests Final Thoughts and Conclusions

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