Sony DRX710UL DVD+R Double Layer External DVD+-RW Drive (16x)

Rating:
Summary: Poor Consistency
Review: Beware of this DVD burner. The mix of features and the price is right, but I've found that my projects burn successfully only about 20-25% of the time. It takes about 4-5 tries to successfully burn a DVD. I've tried this with different software and on different PCs, so I can only assume it's the burner.

Rating:
Summary: It has many problems but works ok for me.
Review: I bought the Sony drive and installed the Nero software only to have my computer recover from a serious error caused by the Nero software. But then I updated the software and my computer was O.K. again. Another problem is that I need to restart my computer after every time I burn a DVD. This is due to the fact that after every burn my computer suddenly doesn't recognize anything I insert into the drive. Also, be forewarned that the software will only burn a DVD with two drives (one reading and the other writing)once; afterward it won't recognize the other drive as one to work with since the software only supports Sony drives.

Rating:
Summary: Great product from Sony!!!
Review: I just got this at OfficeDepot for USD 229, with an additional USD 30 mail-in-rebate.
It has worked wonderfully. I use it with a Toshiba Satellite 1905-S301 (Pentium 4, 2GHz, 512 MB of RAM) and the firewire connection. Have not tried it with USB 2.0.
Mind you, I have NOT installed the software that came with the burner, but use generic software instead. So far no problems at all. For burning, I have tried both Maxell+R and Memorex+RW, no broken discs. Burned +R and +RW play perfectly in my Philips DVP642. A great buy!!

Rating:
Summary: Dual Layer, Dual Enjoyment.
Review: I purchased this product about a week ago, since I was looking for an external DVD burner to hook up to my laptop (IBM T-30 w/pcmcia firewire card) in order to consolidate a lot of cd's that I had lying around.


Out of the Box:
The first thing I noticed was the size of the burner, which is actually pretty big compared to everything else on my desk, but with the verticle stand, it's not a problem. The drive itself looks like a high quality product, Sony even went the extra step of giving it a gloss finish.

Included in the box is a USB cable, and a Firewire cable with a 4 pin connector on one side, and a 6 pin on the other (the back of the drive has both a 6 pin firewire connector, and a 4 pin, so if you only have one type on your computer, you can just flip the cable around). Btw, Sony calls the firewire cable an "i.LINK" cable for some reason. Also included is a packet with the warranty, and seperate packet for the manuals and software CD.


On the software CD:
Nero Burning Rom 6-SE
InCD 4
Nero Vision Express 2
Nero BackItUp
Nero Showtime


Installation:
The drive is purely plug and play, there are no drivers on the CD at all. Connect it by either the firewire or USB cable and it recognizes it very quickly. After the drive showed up in my computer, I popped in the software CD and installed the Nero software suite. I'm very happy that they included Nero, considering it's one of the best CD/DVD burning programs out there.


Performance:
I went out and bought a generic brand of 4x DVD-R's to test the drive out, put in Kill Bill Vol 2, and started burning. Even at 4x, the entire process took 15 minutes. I was anxious to try out the Dual Layer feature, so I went out and bought a pack of DVD+R DL's. These things are not cheap, each one retailing around $10 a disc. After deciding on what to back up, I went to burn it. It took a bit of time, since it's burning at 2.4x, but it went flawlessly. I was a bit nervous, since I would've been annoyed (to say the least) at coastering a $10 disc.



In conclusion, I am extremely satisfied with this product. I can't find a reason not to give it less than 5 stars. It's easy to setup, it's easy to use, and it performs like a dream.

Rating:
Summary: Solid Product and the BIOS has been updated.
Review: Paul (review below) did such a fine job that I only have a little bit to add. First I want to add that my initial experiences with this DVD burner have surpassed all of my expectations. The Nero software they provide is excellent; the DVD burner is pleasure to use. And FAST too.

I want to mention that Sony has two updated BIOS releases that takes DVD-R writing speeds from 8x to 12x. There are other advances also. And the BIOS update is so easy to do.

(...)

There are two updates. One update (says it is for the 710A but the DRX-710UL has a 710A inside so it applies here) updates media compatibility and improves writing speeds. That update is named 710A_BYX2.EXE.

The second update is for us users that connect to the computer with a USB cable. That update is FWUPDATE.EXE and it resolves some issues with WinXP SP2 communications on the USB interface.

I have now done both updates on my burner. I ran FWUPDATE.EXE first, rebooted and then with the USB interface issues all updated, I ran 710A_BYX2.EXE.

The 710A_BYX2.EXE update paused for what seemed like a minute or two at the 100% progress mark, but just be patient and eventually you should get the "inquiry" message followed by the "update was completed successfully" message and an invitation to reboot.

Upon reboot after the 710A_ByX2.EXE update, WinXP saw my DVD Burner as a new device (again).

All in all, it is pretty slick. But, of course, proceed at your own risk after printing out and carefully following the provided (on the web-site) instructions for each BIOS.


I've been burning with Fuji (Taiyo Yuden) 8x DVD +R and -R as well as ProDisc 8X DVD-R and it simply couldn't be easier.