Verdict: Can two layers make light work of DVD writing?
Plextor is known for making fast drives and the PX-716A's specs look promising. It supports 16x writing to both DVD+R and -R discs. With a DVD-RW in the tray, it will burn at 4x, but should you use a DVD+RW, Plextor claims it can record at a heady 8x. Trusty old CDs are well supported with 24x re-write, and 48x write. As you would expect from a spangly new Plextor drive with these write speeds, you also get top read speeds of 16x with DVDs and 48x with CDs.
However, the most interesting feature of this drive is the dual-layer function, which allows you to write 8.5GB to a dual-layer DVD+R9 disc at 4x speeds. Although we could only get hold of 2.4x-speed DVD+R9 media, the PX-716A still wrote it at 4x speed.
The PX-716A has an 8MB memory buffer, and a host of features to enhance usability. It benefits from buffer under-run protection, which improves reliability when writing.
There's also a host of Plextor utilities, such as GigaRec, which allows you to write 1GB of data or about 111 minutes of audio to a standard 700MB CD-R. PowerRec maximises the quality and reliability of burning at high speeds, which may be exceedingly useful if rumours on the Internet about the current reliability of 16x writable DVDs are to be believed.
This brings us to a very salient point about high-speed DVD writers, and one we ran up against when we first tested dual-layer drives (see Issue 13, p52): there's no media. You have almost no chance of getting hold of 'the good stuff', as we discovered when we tried to get hold of appropriate media for testing. Unfortunately, this means we couldn't test the top 16x write speed of the PX-716A and were limited to 8x media instead, which is the fastest media currently available.
Despite being limited by the 8x media, the PX-716A proved to be faster than both the dual-layer drives we reviewed previously, the NEC ND-2510A and the Sony DRU-700A (see Issue 13, p52). The PX-716A wrote 4.2GB of data to a DVD-R in eight minutes and 25 seconds, about a minute quicker than the NEC and Sony. However, this is about one minute slower than the single-layer Plextor PX-712SA (see Issue 12, p58) using the same media.
The opposite was true when testing with re-writable DVDs, as the PX-716A was slower than its dual-layer rivals. The NEC drive wrote both DVD+RWs and DVD-RWs in 13 minutes and 46 seconds, whereas the PX-716A's fastest re-writing performance was using a DVD+RW, taking 14 minutes and 16 seconds.
In the CD burning test, the PX-716A took a reasonable three minutes and 27 seconds to zap 700MB of data onto a CD-R. This was about the same as the NEC, but 40 seconds slower than the single-layer PX-712SA.
The PX-716A took nine minutes and 30 seconds to complete the audio CD ripping test, which is considerably slower than the PX-712SA's eight minutes and three seconds. However, the PX-716A was a more respectable DVD ripper, just 30 seconds slower than the PX-712SA.
However, the real test of a dual-layer drive is writing dual-layer discs. It took the PX-716A a whole 26 minutes and 28 seconds to write 8.2GB of data to a dual-layer disc. This is three times as long as it took to write half that data to a DVD+R, although it did manage to write the dual-layer disc without problems.
CONCLUSION
The moral of the story, it seems, is not to buy a dual-layer DVD burner for its single-layer performance, but for its features. As an alternative, the EIDE version (PX-712A) of Plextor's award-winning single-layer DVD burner, the PX-712SA, is now available for £63 from Scan, and is blisteringly fast.
However, if you need a drive that can write over 8GB of data to a single disc, the PX-716A will satisfy your needs, albeit at a slightly more sedate pace.
