- Writing Performance

Now we will check the burning performance with DVD media. Below, the available writing speeds as given by Nero Burning Rom.

Using Nero CDSpeed with DVD-R and DVD+R media, we are able to see the 16X writing strategies.

- DVD+R media @ 16X CAV

- DVD-R media @ 16X CAV

- Burning Tests

One of the most prominent features of the PX-755SA is that of AUTOSTRATEGY.

A separate database collects all strategies that were created by the AUTOSTRATEGY function for media which are not yet supported in the firmware. These strategies are additional to the write strategies of supported media that are stored in the firmware. A maximum of 31 write strategies can be held in the non-volatile memory of the drive. The entries can be activated or de-activated, and deleted. The list of database entries can be viewed and saved or printed.
The user can select if they prefer, to use the write strategy from the AUTOSTRATEGY database, or from the database that resides in the drive's firmware by activating a different mode.

1. Auto Selection Mode
The drive will select the best write strategy, whether it is located in the AS Database or in the firmware database. If no suitable strategy is found, AUTOSTRATEGY will create a new, optimised strategy in the AS Database.

2. AS On Mode (Forced)
The drive will create a new write strategy for every new recording, whether a corresponding strategy exists already ( in the firmware) or not.

3. AS On Mode
The drive will use the write strategies from the AS database for recording. If no suitable strategy is found, a corresponding write strategy from the firmware's database will be used.

4. AS off Mode
The drive will only use the strategies from the firmware's database for recording. If no corresponding write strategy is found, the default write strategy will be used.

In our case we chose to use the first option, the Auto Selection Mode, and burn the following DVD media.

DVD-R media

As we can see from the above table, all media were burned at their certified speeds, although the reported time does not always match the burning speed, especially in the case of 16X recording. AUTOSTRATEGY is mostly responsible for this. We repeated some burnings with the feature disabled and this produced more appropriate times, in most cases. However, AUTOSTRATEGY is the feature that will probably sway most buyers to get the Plextor PX-755SA. For this reason, further on this review, we provide a page with tests carried out exclusively with AUTOSTRATEGY.

• DVD+R media

As with DVD-R media, the drive fails to produce burn times typical of a 16X burn which is usually around 6 minutes. Only in the case of DVD+RW media, were the times close to the mark.

- DVD Overburning Test

We tried overburning a DVD using Nero Burning Rom and a file of 4556MB. During Leadout, Nero reported an error and the burn failed.