EXCLUSIVES

Plextor® has always been known for making the best CD burners. Now, it asserts that leadership in the DVD recorder market with a striking coup-the world's first 8x DVD+R recorder-that's 4.7 gigabytes you can burn in less than eight minutes, a real breakthrough in optical technology. And, the price is right for the model PX-708UF-under $250 for an attractive external drive with both Firewire® and USB2 connectivity. Better yet, 708UF can get 6x to 8x speeds out of most 4x DVD+R disks, a feat no competing drive can match.

Styling

This drive oozes quality. Just something as simple as the ineffably smooth, quiet way the tray opens and shuts puts you on notice that this is a perfectly engineered device. Its appearance is also a big step forward for Plextor; the silver finish and rounded contours show an excellent grasp of the essentials of contemporary style.

As pleasing as the drive is to look at, there's icing on the cake. No less than twelve colors are available. These show humor as well as taste: Baby Blue, Radical Red, and many more in between.

Software

The box includes the standard lite CD/DVD apps from Roxio® in both Mac® and Windows® versions, as well as a 30-day trial of Dantz Retrospect for backup, but only for Windows. (Well, most Mac users probably are probably already using the invaluable Retrospect for backup. It's still new for many Windows users.)

Capabilities

The chart below shows the different media the drive handles, along with its top speeds for each:

The only format the PX 708 does not support is the excellent but fading DVD-RAM rewritable format. All but a very few of today's drives have dropped this format, which, though it was first on the block, seems to have lost out to the newer formats, particularly in the United States. The PX-708A supports Mt. Rainier (still rare on DVD burners) and overburning up to 99 minutes on CDs. However, overburning is still primarily supported by Windows apps.

Special Features

PoweRec (for Plextor Optimized Writing Error Reduction Control) is one of Plextor's exclusive, proprietary features to ensure better burn quality. When you insert a blank into the drive, it identifies the media from a large database in order to select the best laser power and speed. If the media is not in the database, PowerRec analyzes it and runs tests to ensure the best-though not necessarily the fastest-writing performance.

PowerRec also continuously monitors write performance and adjusts burn speed and laser power on the fly. The database gets updated each time you upgrade the drive firmware. Most users don't bother to update the firmware, and PowerRec's intelligent ensures that they will get optimum burns regardless.

Plextor's VariRec technology, which has also long been featured on its CD burners, both reduces jitter and increases the quality of audio disks, partly by reducing C1 errors to near zero. VariRec also lets you manually adjust laser power to optimize audio quality. However, although VariRec works automatically, manual adjustment requires software support that is for now only available from Windows CD-Burning applications, such as Nero.

Plextor also naturally includes its highly optimized variant of Burn-Proof technology to eliminate buffer underruns for both CD and DVD burning. Buffer underruns usually occur when you are not dedicating your computer to CD/DVD burning. The system runs out of speed, and the drive stops.

Without buffer underrun protection, you have a coaster. But with buffer underrun technology, the drive can start again where it stopped. The only problem is that there's a tiny gap at that point. Plextor has worked hard to get that gap to almost unmeasurable levels. When Burn-Proof for CD drives first came out, the gap was as large as 50 micrometers, a figure allowed by the Red Book specification.

Plextor has brought this down to less than 2 micrometers. Although larger gaps are permissible, the smaller the gap, the more likely it is that the disc will be read correctly. Plextor deserves kudos for spending the engineering hours and developing the manufacturing expertise to get the gap so small.

DAE quality

Digital audio extraction (DAE)-extracting a perfect image from an audio CD-is a crucial capability. Here the Plextor does not disappoint. By contrast, many less expensive drives, such as LG's GSA 4040B triple format writer, don't have good DAE capability. Moreover, as with all Plextor drives, digital audio extraction is at full speed: 40x.

Tests

We tested with a variety of media, primarily Verbatim®, which we have found to be reliable year after year. As Plextor claimed, we were able to get between 6x and 8x burns on most 4x media. We were able to get 8x on 8x media, of course, but 8x certified media is in extremely short supply at the time of writing, and may command a premium price for a few months.

As fast as the Plextor writes, we were also impressed with its reading speeds, which on balance were substantially ahead of any of the competition for all media.

Negatives

Negatives are minor. The Plextor has been criticized for having only a 2MB buffer. But nearly all manufacturers, after a fruitless buffer war, have now gone back to 2MB. The fact is that, as long as the drive has some kind of burn-proof mechanism in place, there is no need for more buffer memory; and more just boosts the cost of the drive. The 708UF has also been criticized for not supporting DVD-RAM. But, such extras would have boosted the price even further for a questionable benefit, and very few drives today do support it. Finally, the Plextor is of course more expensive than its counterparts but quality costs. We consider the price of this drive reasonable in view of its performance, style, and overall quality.

Summary

This beautifully designed, beautifully manufactured drive has it all: 8x DVD+R recording (even with most 4x disks), plus state of the art burning for DVD-, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, CR-R and CD-RW.

It is truly the ultimate DVD/CD recorder for 2004.