Plextor PX-504A DVD+RW Review

[dang]

Checkout our latest review of the Plextor PX-504A DVD+RW (http://reviews.designtechnica.com/review56.html)Plextor’s name and reputation has traditionally been synonymous with performance and quality. This time however Plextor’s new PX-504A DVD+R/RW drive is lacking their usual refinement.

[Ioman]

I know that a lot of Plextor fans will be dissapointed by this review. I was very disspointed in the drive myself. I cannot believe they would not include an audio cable or a DVD+RW disc in the package. The drive was also pretty non-exciting. It just was not as power hungry as Plextors previous products. I am excited to review the new Sony +/-RW drive and TDK's IndiDVD drives as I have heard good things about them.

[questionlp]

I think that the drive is too little too late in the already competitve arena of DVD recordable drives. I think if they had gone with DVD -/+ RW and made it a little better, it would have been nearly perfect (making it a SCSI drive would make it perfect :))

It may not be the fastest or newest drive in the market, but I love my Pioneer A04. The only gripe that I have with it is that it cannot record audio CDs and EAC won't detect the drive (that could be due to the FireWire <-> ATA bridge used in the FireWire enclosure).

If I do decide to go with a new DVD recordable drive, it would either be Sony's -/+ combo drive or the A05.

[Cloud]

Originally posted by questionlp
I think that the drive is too little too late in the already competitve arena of DVD recordable drives. I think if they had gone with DVD -/+ RW and made it a little better, it would have been nearly perfect (making it a SCSI drive would make it perfect :))

It may not be the fastest or newest drive in the market, but I love my Pioneer A04. The only gripe that I have with it is that it cannot record audio CDs and EAC won't detect the drive (that could be due to the FireWire <-> ATA bridge used in the FireWire enclosure).

If I do decide to go with a new DVD recordable drive, it would either be Sony's -/+ combo drive or the A05.

I agree. Sony's -/+ drive is looking more apealing each time I hear about it. Any idea what the model number and price of the Soyn drive is ? It is a shame that this Plextor drive is not a high performer. I don't think MaximumPC rated it good at all either. On their site the only award this drive has recieved is from 3dGameMan.com. And we ALL know he gives out awards to everything. The TDK indiDVD drive looks sweet too.

[dang]

The cool thing about the sony combo drive is that with a firmware upgrade, you get 4.0x dvd+r burning.

The model # of the sony is DRU500AX

[questionlp]

I agree. Sony's -/+ drive is looking more apealing each time I hear about it. Any idea what the model number and price of the Soyn drive is ?

I think the Sony drive lists for $399... at least that is what I saw about a month ago when I last looked at the drive. It could be less now, mostly when they are planning on releasing an external USB 2.0 and/or an external FireWire (I'm going with the latter) drive for about $100 more.

For about $100 more than the A05, it's not too, too bad considering you are getting - and + recording capabilities. The next drive I'm getting has to have 2+ X -RW no matter what :D

[dang]

For myself, I wouldnt buy the sony combo drive, because what would you really need it for?

I for one wouldnt buy +rw and -rw discs. I would end up buying only one. And most likely that would be +rw since the +rw standard supports faster burn speeds, supports most of the video features of dvd players, and seems to be gaining better support from the big manufactures.

Sure, -rw plays on more older dvd players then +rw, but any newer dvd player (and I'm talking 2 or 3 years new), will play back +rw.

Why would you guys buy the combo?

[questionlp]

Right now, I have several DVD-RW disks because I have more data that needs to be on a rewritable disk to fit onto a single -RW disk. That and I can split the data into categories and leave some space available for additional data down the road.

Why I would like to have +RW capability? What if I have friends that have +RW and came over, wanted a demo or something to burn onto a disk? Also, the current DVD video recorders use +R/+RW more than -R/-RW (outside of Pioneer that is).

Having the ability to at least write to both would be nice. Is it required for me, not yet. That's why I'm also looking at the A05 or newer.

[trunksy]

I have a LEVEL 5 U160 RAID array on my computer and it won't burn CD-R's. Just DVD+R(W)s. After a long protracted troubleshooting process with Plextor tech support including reloading of the OS with minimal devices and rebuilding my computer without the RAID array, we finally figured out it has something to do with SCSI not allowing the PX-504A to prioritize on the system correctly. At least, that's the explanation they gave me. Since the RAID array is the primary boot device for my computer, I ended up having to remove the PX-504A from my computer. If anyone knows of a brand that has a DVD+RW drive that will work correctly on a system with a RAID array, please let me know.

[Ioman]

Originally posted by trunksy
I have a LEVEL 5 U160 RAID array on my computer and it won't burn CD-R's. Just DVD+R(W)s. After a long protracted troubleshooting process with Plextor tech support including reloading of the OS with minimal devices and rebuilding my computer without the RAID array, we finally figured out it has something to do with SCSI not allowing the PX-504A to prioritize on the system correctly. At least, that's the explanation they gave me. Since the RAID array is the primary boot device for my computer, I ended up having to remove the PX-504A from my computer. If anyone knows of a brand that has a DVD+RW drive that will work correctly on a system with a RAID array, please let me know.

Did you try upgrading the firmware at all? I was having similar problems with my personal computer which has SATA RAID on it, but after upgrading the drives firmware, everything seems fine now.

[Ioman]

I moved this over from a user review on this drive. The poster posted twice and this comment talked more about our review than reviewing the actual product.

Steve says:

"Just had to add a couple more comments. In the "Performance" section of this so-called review, the reviewer states that the Plextor performed below average in the "majority" of the test. He then cites digital extraction data (ripping) and CD writing speeds as evidence of this "below average" performance. Are you kidding me???? NO DVD WRITER is any good at ripping!! And who cares about the perceived difference in CD writing speed between the 504 and other Plextor (dedicated) CD writers??? The reviewer seems to have missed a rather LARGE point here - people buy DVD writers to BURN DVDs !! And this burner does that exceedingly well. One last point - the reviewer concludes the "Performance" section by stating that the SiSoftware Sandra tests "..surprised us as we expected the PX-504A to show us an average performance. According to our test though, the PX-504A outperformed the reference 5X DVD Writer used in this test." So I guess that as a DVD WRITER, the 504A is not so "AVERAGE". Again - do your homework - don't rely on so-called experts. Read the forums and reviews at dvdrhelp.com, for example. There you will find comments by hundreds, if not thousands of regular users."

[Ioman]

Originally posted by Ioman
I moved this over from a user review on this drive. The poster posted twice and this comment talked more about our review than reviewing the actual product.

Steve says:

"Just had to add a couple more comments. In the "Performance" section of this so-called review, the reviewer states that the Plextor performed below average in the "majority" of the test. He then cites digital extraction data (ripping) and CD writing speeds as evidence of this "below average" performance. Are you kidding me???? NO DVD WRITER is any good at ripping!! And who cares about the perceived difference in CD writing speed between the 504 and other Plextor (dedicated) CD writers??? The reviewer seems to have missed a rather LARGE point here - people buy DVD writers to BURN DVDs !! And this burner does that exceedingly well. One last point - the reviewer concludes the "Performance" section by stating that the SiSoftware Sandra tests "..surprised us as we expected the PX-504A to show us an average performance. According to our test though, the PX-504A outperformed the reference 5X DVD Writer used in this test." So I guess that as a DVD WRITER, the 504A is not so "AVERAGE". Again - do your homework - don't rely on so-called experts. Read the forums and reviews at dvdrhelp.com, for example. There you will find comments by hundreds, if not thousands of regular users."


Steve,

I think that a lot of people just expected more out of this drive. I also think that a lot of people purchase a DVD writer to replace their current CD-RW drives and that they will most likely not have both drives in their system.

We also had some serious problems with the 504A reading older burned CD-R/RW media which was only just recently addressed with Plextors latest Firmware update. For the money, it would be better spent on either the Sony or Pioneer +/R drives, or even Plextors very own dual format 8X DVD writer.

The 504A is just an average drive with average - below average performance. There was no audio cable or CD-R media with the drive, Digital Audio extraction was poor, even for a DVD writer and CD-R incompatibilities.

Cnet review: http://reviews.cnet.com/4505-3212_7-20864276.html?tag=search

[ECA]

http://www.plextor.com/english/products/pdfs/504A.pdf

[ECA]

Speeds
17X-40X (CD read only) 2.6-6.0 MB/sec (Mode 1, Mode 2 Form 1 and CD-R)
16X (CD write only) 2.4 MB/sec (CD-R)
13X-32X (CD read only) 2.08-4.8 MB/sec (Mode 1, Mode 2 Form 1, CD-DA and CD-R)
4X-10X (CD read only) 1.56-3.6 MB/sec (Mode 1, Mode 2 Form 1, CD-DA and CD-R)
10X (CD rewrite only) 1.5 MB/sec
8X (CD read/CD write) 1.2 MB/sec (Mode 2 Form 2 read only)
4X (CD write/CD rewrite) 600 KB/sec
4X (DVD write only) 5.4 MB/sec
2.4X (DVD write/rewrite) 3.24 MB/sec
5X-12X (DVD read only) 6.75-16.2 MB/sec
3X-7X (DVD read only) 4.05-9.45 MB/sec
2X-5X (DVD read only) 2.7-6.75 MB/sec (Playing DVD-Video)

Burst Read/Write
16.6 MB/sec (PIO Mode 4/DMA Mode 2)
33 MB/sec (Ultra DMA Mode 2)

DVD+R (4.7 GB) 4X Verbatim/Mitsubishi Chemical, Taiyo Yuden, Ricoh
2.4X Verbatim/Mitsubishi Chemical, Taiyo Yuden
DVD+RW 2.4X Verbatim/Mitsubishi Chemical, Ricoh
CD-R (74 min or 80 min) 4X-16X Verbatim/Mitsubishi Chemical, Taiyo Yuden, Mitsui Chemicals, Ricoh, Maxell
CD-RW (74 min) 4X-10X Verbatim/Mitsubishi Chemical, Ricoh
(All CD-RW Media is rewritable up to 1,000 times)

Disc Useable DVD Formats DVD-ROM, DVD Video, Multi Border (closed disc read only), multi-session

Useable CD Formats CD-DA, CD-Extra, CD-ROM Mode 1, CD-ROM Mode 2, CD-ROM XA, Photo CD, Video CD, CD-I, Multi-session, CD-Text, UDF

Disc Diameter 12 cm (74, 79 minutes)
Recording CD Modes Track-at-once, Disc-at-once, Session-at-once, Multi-session, Fixed and Variable Packet Writing
Recording DVD Modes Sequential write, Random access write and Disc-at-once
+ R/RW Modes
Recording CD-R/RW Modes Track-at-once, Disc-at-once, Session-at-once, Multi-session, Fixed and Variable Packet Writing


OK, I have to ask, did it MEET all of these statements??
Its a 16x CD writer, nothing more.
4x DVD writer.
What are you expecting. You should HAVE a sound cable in your machine from your OLD CD player.
As for formats, readable, I dont think you can beat it.