The Plextor PX-740UF

     Internal burners are great, but there is nothing like owning an external/portable CD/DVD burner. You can move it from computer to computer or from home to work and back again with the only hassle being the power and USB cables. The case doesn't seem to be as rugged as Plextor's old silver aluminum case, but it still very well designed. The case even has large rubber dampeners on each corner to help absorb some of the shock if you happen to drop the unit. The dampeners also help keep the drive in place on your desk, no matter which end you lay the drive on.

Test System

     For this review I'll be using a system based on ABIT's AA8 DuraMAX motherboard equipped with a 3.4GHz P4 and 2Gb of OCZ DDR.

Testing

     There must be endless ways you can test a burner. You can test countless brands of media and media speeds. You can test every type of media from your standard 48x CD+R, DVD+ or - R and then on to DVD+R DL and everything in between. I've seen burner reviews in excess of 50 pages while spending hundred on test media. All that work and their readers fall to sleep after the first 2 pages. Again we use the ClubOC moto and that is KEEP IT SIMPLE. After all, most people could care a less how fast a drive will burn your pet dog's photo album 700 different ways to a 2x DVD+RW on a Thursday night with a full moon. The real questions that need to be answered is will the drive perform as advertised, is the drive worth my hard earned money, and will I be satisfied with my purchase? Those are simple questions that even a CompUSA tech rep can answer. So let's keep it simple and test with 3 basic medias; CD+R, DVD+R and DVD+R DL.

CD+R Tests

     First off, I tested the PX-740UF CD burning capability with a TDK 48x disk. From start to finish, it only took about 4 minutes to burn the disk. That even included the time it took to compile nearly 700mb of data. The drive held strong at 48x and 7200Kb/s. Next let's see how the drive reads the disk we just burned.

     Using the Nero CD-DVD Speed tool we can benchmark the drive and gather some pretty detailed information such as Average Speed, Seek Times, burst rates, CPU Usage and more. The 740UF has shown us it can burn through and read a standard data CD with ease while only using a maximum of 7% of the test system's CPU power. Next let's see how it does with a data DVD.

DVD+R Tests

     Of course DVDs take a longer to burn, but they do hold about 4.7Gb of data. The nice thing about the 740UF is it will burn a DVD+R disk at 16x with is little over 22KB/s. This means you can burn a full DVD in about 6 to 7 minutes. Remember back when DVD burners first came out and they took a good hour to burn a DVD? Things have definitely changed for the better!

     I ran dozens of tests with Nero CD-DVD Speed with several different DVDs and the results were pretty much the same each time. When burning a DVD, the drive would max out at about 14 to 15x. Not quite the solid 16x I was looking for. Also CPU usage goes up dramatically.

DVD+R DL

     The Double Layer media may be very expensive, but the drive seems to make up the cost with Double Layer performance. The drive can burn an entire 8.5Gb disk in about 15 minutes. I was expecting much longer burn time. With CD-DVD Speed, you can see where each layer was tested separately.