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PLEXTOR PX-712SA SATA DVD Burner
I had hoped to review the PX-716 drive but it was called back for modifications so I ended up with the PX-712SA instead. Here is what Plextor have to say about it <TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width=600 border=0>Leading Edge Performance | Plextor, one of the leading companies for the development and production of CD-ROM drives, CD-Recorders and CD-ReWriters is expanding its range with its second Dual Format drive: PX-712SA, which writes DVD's at 12-speed, rewrites at 4-speed using the DVD plus format. With the DVD minus format, this drive writes at 8x and rewrites at 4x. The PX-712SA reads DVD-ROMs at 16x. The PX-712SA comes in internal version with a Tray load mechanism. The Retail package includes: PX-712SA (DVD Recorder), Serial ATA cable, power cable, Plextor CD/DVD Utility Software (PlexTools Professional), Nero 6 and InCD recording software, Pinnacle Studio 9 software, Nero BackItUp, PowerDVD software, 16-language manual. The PX-712SA is supported by a unique two-year On-Site Collect & Return** guarantee by Plextor, by which any inconveniences resulting from a defect are reduced to a minimum. The firmware is stored in FlashROM which makes it possible to quickly and easily upgrade to the latest version. CD TEXT is also completely supported. With the PX-712SA, the user has a perfect all-in-one product for creating own home videos, back-ups, composition of photograph collections, saving music... PX-712SA Benefits
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The drive has the standard Plextor sleek appearance, cream front with black ebony finish bottom strip to the tray front, the mechanics of the tray loading mechanism is very slick & smooth decelerating at both ends of its travel making it one of the quietest loading mechanisms not unlike its predecessor the PX-708A. The drive front follows the trend with most of the modern drives in that the headphone jack & volume control are absent. The connectors for the SATA & power I found to be a rather loose fit and when connected to the drive & slid into the drive bay the cables were dislodged so I found I had to secure the connectors in place with some hot melt glue, I do feel that these connectors could have been made to clip on more securely.
The drives will burn DVD+R at 12x speed and DVD-R at 8x speed and here is the burn graphs produced with Nero DCD/DVD Speed
 | With Nero Data disc test burn the burning time is 6m 16secs which is the fastest time so far I have encountered when burning at 12x speed BenQ DW1620 6m 30sec Pioneer DVR-108 7m 01sec NEC ND3500AG 7m 08sec |
 | At 8x speed burning it takes 8m 03 secs to complete the burn as against BenQ 9m 18sec Pioneer DVR108 8m 05sec NEC ND3500AG 9m 39sec |
The Plextor PX-712SA is the fastest 8X burner (just) and the fastest 12x burner I have tested you can see the results of the other drives in these tests linked from this page.
The drive does not support D/L media but how does it perform with single layer media. Well these tests are ongoing with the media as I receive it and the tests linked here show the media I have so far tested with this drive and the results show this drive to be the most compatible of the bunch.
 | Here is just 1 scan of a Datawrite Hub printable FUJIFILM03 burnt at 8X speed and the PI scan is so low that the graph did not rescale from its minimum setting of 10 full scale Jitter is very low with an average of 8.1% and only just reaching 10% at the outer edge a sign of a good burn with a good drive to good media. |
 | The Plextools supplied with the drive have the provision for altering the read speed of DVD & CD media and have the following settings |
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These are provisional tests with this drive and the results look promising especially with the media comparisons carried out so far. I t will be interesting to see how it stands up to the other drives in my media comparison tests
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