Plextor PX-208T
10. Conclusion
Plextor PX-208T combo CDRW/DVD - Page 10
Conclusion
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Positive (+) |
Negative (-) |
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- Attractive design |
- Doesn't support overburning |
Apart from the fact that an external portable drive is always welcomed from users who do not only use their office internal PC recorder for their daily needs, Plextor PX-208T additionally offers the chance to use one device for both CD writing/reading and DVD reading. The 8x8x24x8 drive does not offer less than its specifications promise.
The main advantages of the drive is the fast reading performance for the 24X category, even with protected data discs, the high writing quality, and the ability to read DVD-ROM and DVD recordable/rewritable media in adequate speeds. Plextor PX-208T is also fast reader/writer under the UDF format, can backup your favorite protected audio CDs without any problems, and seems to offer increased error correction capabilities in the DVD media reading. The drive showed an excellent behavior in the DVD error correction test since it did not give any read errors in the test with the artificially defect ABEX DVD test discs.
On the other hand, there are some issues that Plextor could possibly work on for a performance improvement. The lack of the overburning feature could be annoying for some users, as well as the locked 8X (max) DAE speed. The Philips CD-RW disc test left us some questions concerning the drive's compatibility with future HS-RW formats, and this is something that the Plextor engineers should improve.
In the error correction tests with the ABEX CD test discs, the PX-208T did not manage to give zero read errors, with the scratched media. Of course this does not mean that your drive will not read accurately your daily discs, since the ABEX CDs stresses the drives capabilities to the limits. Lastly, the drive had some issues with DVD+RW discs, while it read perfectly DVD-R/-RW and DVD+R media.
Plextor offers one year warranty and free tech support for the PX-208T, and the price of the drive is approximately $260. The price is high, but the overall performance and the excellent DVD performance worth the increased cost for those who need a good portable DVD reader and a CD-RW drive in the same package.
