Rating: 
Summary: Plextor is #1 in optical drives
Review: Plextor has always set the bar in quality and performance among optical media drives. This is my 3rd Plextor to date and have been impressed as always. One thing that sets Plextor drives apart is they measure their read and write speeds based on minimum specifications. If they say their drive is 48x, then that is 48x to the outside of the disk (where data is read at a slower rate) unlike many other drive manufacturers. The reason I always pay the extra money for Plextor drives is that they are THE most compatible drive on the market in terms of system and software. Features that came up in the past such as 'overburning' cd's or writing in excess of what CDR's were rated like buring 670mb instead of 650mb to a disk, were supported very early on by Plextor. As well as software such as Nero only allowed you to do it on certain drives, they of course allowed you to do it with Plextor drives. I really wish I could add something about how their support is, but I've never had to use it. Every drive I've ever installed was a straight forward plug and play and really never had to do anything with drivers (generally included with releases of windows). This is my 3rd Plextor drive, all before it just worked until I felt the need to upgrade to a newer one. They seem to cost ¼ to 1/3 more than cheaper drives, but I prefer to save myself the headache of dealing with issues later. I highly recommend any optical drive that Plextor makes!
Rating: 
Summary: Product Support - Lack of
Review: Quality appearance of unit is excellent. However, Plextor RMA product support is severly lacking.
I own the PX-708A, among three other Plextor drives. The unit failed in less than one year. One year is the warranty period. Plextor RMA department has refused to service the unit under warranty. In addition, they state that they no longer repair their products. Their suggestion was for me to go out and buy another newer drive. Bad, bad advertisement!!
The one-star represents product support.
Rating:
Summary: As already said, This is a damn good burner
Review: Real cool burner, didnt have a single problem.
Rating: 
Summary: 2nd drive's a charm...
Review: So then, this writing is primarily about Plextor Customer Assistance, and that "one in ? (some number)" of drives that won't read a disk, and dutifully "blink" their little amber beacon of distress. The e-mail exchanges were prompt & polite, but the suggested work-arounds were really more than Plextor should have expected of an average customer. And, their insistence that the problem might be my use of non-approved media was just plain silly. Ultimately, the RMA (return/exchange) process was quick & painless. It's never pleasant rummaging around inside the case, but all's well that ends well...presently playin' & burnin' to my heart's content.
Rating:
Summary: 2nd drive's a charm...
Review: So then, this writing is primarily about Plextor Customer Assistance, and that "one in ? (some number)" of drives that won't read a disk, and dutifully "blink" their little amber beacon of distress. The e-mail exchanges were prompt & polite, but the suggested work-arounds were really more than Plextor should have expected of an average customer. And, their insistence that the problem might be my use of non-approved media was just plain silly. Ultimately, the RMA (return/exchange) process was quick & painless. It's never pleasant rummaging around inside the case, but all's well that ends well...presently playin' & burnin' to my heart's content.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Stuff!!!!!! Plextor Is Champion
Review: There isnt much to say about this burner that hasnt been said already, its damn good, and nothing can beat it. I bought it about 2 months ago, havent had a single coaster. There is nothing on the market that can rival this except for the 12x plextor drive, the newest plextor dvd burning drive. Again dont waste your money on cheap brands like liteon, msi, or lg. With plextor you will find that no matter what media you use there should be minimal issues. You can even burn 8x on 4x media although i dont reccomend, i have tried it a couple times with no problems, but im guessing i will eventually get a lot more coasters that way. Currently running 1.07 firmware on memorex dvd+r 4x. About to switch to tdk 4x dvd+r media. Also i'm running this burner on a hp vectra 600 pIII. 128 rdram. 120 gig western digital. This configuration is below their minimum requirements and still i have no problems. Whatever, plextor is worth the bucks, get it or else you will be regretting it.
Rating:
Summary: Everyone else will be playing catch-up
Review: This is a truly amazing drive! It's taken everything I can throw at it and I have yet to produce a coaster. I've read a few bad reviews other places but I think most of those were due to cheap media, or computer issues not related to the drive.
Rating:
Summary: Best Drive Out There
Review: This is my first DVD burner, but I have done a great deal of research and this Plextor burner is the best DVD burner available today. It is due mostly to the fact that it can burn at 8x for DVD+Rs, but the 40x CD-R burning is a first for DVD burners as well. It has the best burning speeds available for every format so you can't go wrong with this burner. One thing you will want to do immediately upon installing this drive: update the firmware. Until you update the firmware, you won't be able to burn any DVD-Rs or DVD+Rs unless you are using high quality media. The latest firmware, 1.03, fixes a lot of these issues and it will make sure you burn the least amount of coasters. :) It's a great drive and Plextor is working many of the kinks out as they come up (as all first generation products have) and that is commendable. So far I have had no problems with this drive that weren't fixed with the latest firmware. I've been using Nero exclusively though, since it's what I prefer. I've heard that some people are having trouble using Nero 6, so you might want to stick with 5.5. If you are looking for the best DVD burner out there, look no further than the Plextor PX-708a.
Rating:
Summary: The drive is great - included software not good
Review: This is the DVD/R/RW drive I have been holding out for. It reads & writs all DVD recordable formats except DVD-RAM. And at the fastest speeds possible today. It will even write to DVD+R 4x media at 6-8x! But it will not write to DVD+RW 2.4x at 4x. You have to use DVD+RW 4x media to get 4x RW speeds-and right now those are hard to find! But 2.4x is not half bad for RW. As for burning CDR/RW, it does the trick and is even faster than my old 24x burner. But be careful! I found out the hard way that burning to SOME media at higher speeds is not ideal for playback in most CD-Audio players. You might begin to hear artifacts such as skipping and clicking on SOME players. But if you play it back on the computer it sounds just fine. Best to keep audio recordings at or below 24x. Note, however, that this drive is limited to 4, 8, 16, 32, or 40x CDR recordings. The 4-8x recording speeds allow you use VariREC to experiment with the intensity of the write laser to make your recordings more compatible with older, more fussy CD palyers & drives, though I found that using CDR manufactured by Taiyo-Yuden solves this problem most of the time (Taiyo-Yuden CDR are known to often read back with less errors than today's pressed CD's). PoweREC monitors the recording quality throughout the burning process and will adjust the recording speed to maintain a consistent write quality throughout the disc. But keep in mind, the drive is very good at reading poor discs (more so than most audio players and other CD/DVD rom drives), so that doesn't guarantee that other drives won't experience some problems. You can disable this feature if you wish (but why would you want to do that?) Missing from the features list is Plextor's GigaREC and Q-Check - available only in the Plextor Premium line of CDR drives. But it can play back discs recorded using the GigaREC feature. I would have liked to have seen those features here, but certainly the drive packs quite a punch anyway. The only other drawback is the included software. Roxio Easy CD Creator 6.0 Standard. I found this software to be very quirky, especially the Classic interface. It has a habit of locking up the computer, and mine is not the only one, after having read the message boards on the Roxio website. The disc-to-disc copy software worked well, is feature-packed, and had a very nice graphic display during copy. At the time I chucked this software in favor of Nero, there were no updates available to fix the lock up problems. I never tried the DVD authoring portion of the software. Additionally, Plextor did not include PlexTools - an awesome piece of software that is included with their PlexWriter Premium drives. That is probably because the PlexTools hadn't been updated with DVD capabilities yet, and due to the fact that the drive doesn't support Q-Check--the ability to run a qualitative analysis of the recordings it makes and display the error rates to the user, which is particularly useful in determining whather the brand of CDR you are using is good or bad. All-in-all, I would be doing a disservice to give this drive anything less than 5 stars-it is clearly the best DVD and CD buring drive on the market. And with the introduction of the 708UF external models (in more than a rainbow of colors to match your computer's case!), there's no reason to consider another drive for all of your DVD or CD burning needs. Note: Plextor recommends using Verbatim DVD media. For CDRs, they highly recommend Verbatim Datalife+ (not standard Datalife) or Taiyo-Yuden. These will give the best results, with error rates close to that of quality pressed media, especially when burned at 4-8x. Of course, most media will work just fine. I have burned Memorex and TDK 4x DVD+R at 8x speeds.
Rating:
Summary: The drive is great - included software not good
Review: This is the DVD/R/RW drive I have been holding out for. It reads & writs all DVD recordable formats except DVD-RAM. And at the fastest speeds possible today. It will even write to DVD+R 4x media at 6-8x! But it will not write to DVD+RW 2.4x at 4x. You have to use DVD+RW 4x media to get 4x RW speeds-and right now those are hard to find! But 2.4x is not half bad for RW. As for burning CDR/RW, it does the trick and is even faster than my old 24x burner. But be careful! I found out the hard way that burning to SOME media at higher speeds is not ideal for playback in most CD-Audio players. You might begin to hear artifacts such as skipping and clicking on SOME players. But if you play it back on the computer it sounds just fine. Best to keep audio recordings at or below 24x. Note, however, that this drive is limited to 4, 8, 16, 32, or 40x CDR recordings. The 4-8x recording speeds allow you use VariREC to experiment with the intensity of the write laser to make your recordings more compatible with older, more fussy CD palyers & drives, though I found that using CDR manufactured by Taiyo-Yuden solves this problem most of the time (Taiyo-Yuden CDR are known to often read back with less errors than today's pressed CD's). PoweREC monitors the recording quality throughout the burning process and will adjust the recording speed to maintain a consistent write quality throughout the disc. But keep in mind, the drive is very good at reading poor discs (more so than most audio players and other CD/DVD rom drives), so that doesn't guarantee that other drives won't experience some problems. You can disable this feature if you wish (but why would you want to do that?) Missing from the features list is Plextor's GigaREC and Q-Check - available only in the Plextor Premium line of CDR drives. But it can play back discs recorded using the GigaREC feature. I would have liked to have seen those features here, but certainly the drive packs quite a punch anyway. The only other drawback is the included software. Roxio Easy CD Creator 6.0 Standard. I found this software to be very quirky, especially the Classic interface. It has a habit of locking up the computer, and mine is not the only one, after having read the message boards on the Roxio website. The disc-to-disc copy software worked well, is feature-packed, and had a very nice graphic display during copy. At the time I chucked this software in favor of Nero, there were no updates available to fix the lock up problems. I never tried the DVD authoring portion of the software. Additionally, Plextor did not include PlexTools - an awesome piece of software that is included with their PlexWriter Premium drives. That is probably because the PlexTools hadn't been updated with DVD capabilities yet, and due to the fact that the drive doesn't support Q-Check--the ability to run a qualitative analysis of the recordings it makes and display the error rates to the user, which is particularly useful in determining whather the brand of CDR you are using is good or bad. All-in-all, I would be doing a disservice to give this drive anything less than 5 stars-it is clearly the best DVD and CD buring drive on the market. And with the introduction of the 708UF external models (in more than a rainbow of colors to match your computer's case!), there's no reason to consider another drive for all of your DVD or CD burning needs. Note: Plextor recommends using Verbatim DVD media. For CDRs, they highly recommend Verbatim Datalife+ (not standard Datalife) or Taiyo-Yuden. These will give the best results, with error rates close to that of quality pressed media, especially when burned at 4-8x. Of course, most media will work just fine. I have burned Memorex and TDK 4x DVD+R at 8x speeds.
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