DVD Burning Quality
Verbatim DataLifePlus media (manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemical and Taiyo YudenF) were used for the tests.
DVD-R: Both drives finished the burn session in the same time at the minimal speed: the previous model is just 12 seconds faster. At 8x burn speed, however, the new drive took quite a typical amount of time to write a blank, while the Plextor PX-712A did the same in as many as 11 minutes, which is not normal for this burn speed. I should remind you that PoweRec technology intervened in this case and the drive just slowed down in the second half of the disc, with all the consequences. It’s nice the new drive doesn’t have this defect. Unfortunately, none of the models could work with DVD-R discs at speeds above the rated one (I used 8x blanks), so I didn’t have an opportunity to check out 12x or 16x DVD-R burn speeds.
DVD+R: The drives are very close to each other up to 16x speed. The Plextor PX-712A is a little ahead at 4x and 8x, but the new model is faster at 12x, but with the same very small advantage. In general, the Plextor drives process discs of that type quite fast in average, if we compare them with other devices, but the difference between the available models amounts to no more than 30 seconds. This half a minute hardly matters in practice. You can also see 6x DVD+R burn speed for the first time here. Starting from firmware 1.03, the Plextor PX-716A supports this burn speed with dual-layer blanks and, what’s more important, 2.4x discs were successfully burned at 6x. We’re going to check out the quality of this burning shortly.
DVD+RW: The new model is faster with media of this type. The difference between the drives is almost the same ?about 60 seconds ?at min as well as the max speed. That’s not much, but noticeable at real work. Unfortunately, discs rated for speeds above 4x are yet unavailable, and DVD+RW 4x Overspeed isn’t possible with available discs. So, it’s not yet possible to check out the functionality of the new model in full.
DVD-RW: And again both drives take the same time to burn a disc ?the difference is so small (and only at the max speed) as to be negligible.
