Plextor PX-504A review

Jonathan Bennett ZDNet.co.uk

Published: 15 May 2003

Plextor's PX-504A is a reasonably affordable DVD+RW drive rated at 4X write and 2.4X rewrite. This is both a speed and a cost improvement on some previous +RW drives we've reviewed.

The PX-504A is mechanically the same drive as NEC's ND-1100, which we have also reviewed, and offers the same read and write speeds. Our performance tests suggest that the two units have substantially the same firmware as well, since their throughput and fall-back characteristics are virtually the same.

Both the PX-504A and the ND-1100 deliver the same key features, such as lossless linking and buffer underrun prevention for CD burning with a 2MB buffer.

Plextor claims that the PX-504A's black disc tray minimises jitter, by reducing reflected light within the drive. Although the black may well cut down internal reflections, we're sceptical as to whether this will actually affect the quality of recordings to any great degree. Jitter only represents a problem when you're relying on the drive to provide a real-time stream of data. The reality is that DVD movie player software reads the disc faster than real time and buffers a certain amount of data, which eliminates any problems jitter might cause.

The software bundled with the PX-504A is slightly different to the NEC-1100's. You get Nero Burning ROM 5.5 for CD burning and InCD for packet writing, as with the ND-1100, but Plextor has chosen CyberLink PowerDVD XP 4.0 for movie playback and Pinnacle Studio 8 SE for video editing.

Plextor's own PlexTools utility suite is also bundled. This gives you a view of all the removable media drives in your system, and provides a single window to alter their settings -- these are otherwise scattered among several Windows dialogue boxes, or even inaccessible. The suite provides a number of tools, including a CD copier, simple audio and data creation facilities, a multimedia player application and a rewritable media erase function. There are also digital audio extraction and CD ripping-facilities, including track name look-up on FreeDB.

Plextor has put together a good package comprising a relatively fast DVD+RW drive and a respectable (if not remarkable) software bundle, all for a reasonably affordable price. Although DVD+RW media are more expensive than tape, making backup less cost-effective with this format, if you're serious about digital video on DVD, a +RW drive is your only serious option at present. The PX-504A is a good example of such a drive.

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