PleXWriter PX-W4012U external CDR-W - Page 6

CDR Tests

- Procedure

We tested the drive with latest version of Nero/CloneCD. We used various media for our tests. For a complete supported media list visit Plextor Europe website. We burned CDs at almost all recording speeds from 20x up to 40x using the SAME amount of data for all drives. The drive will not warn you if a media cannot be burned at 40x or 32x recording speed. Other manufacturers automatically drop recording speed when media cannot handle maximum recording speed. The good in that case is that user can understand which media can be used in each recording speed. With PX-W4012U you just select 40x recording speed, and drive chooses automatically, through PoweRec II system, the appropriate burning speed.

The posted recording times are the best we had from our test results. Using other media can increase the final burning time.

- Recording Tests

For all the recording tests, we used slightly more than 80min data (80:01:47).

At 20x, Plextor external drive gave the same results with its internal brother.

At 24x, the PX-W4012U is just one second faster than the PX-W4012A. The fastest writer in this test is CyberDrive CW078D with 229 seconds.

At 32x, the PX-W4012U gave the third best recording time with 208 seconds, while CyberDrive still holds the first place with 196 seconds.

At the maximum supported writing speed, the PX-W4012U is 8 seconds faster than the Plextor ATAPI drive, and gave the third lower recording time.

- Overburning Tests

- CD-Text Results

The drive can read/write CD-Text without any problems.

- CloneCD Writing Tests

The CloneCD v4.0.1.6 reports that all drives support the DAO-RAW feature. For the EFM correction (SD2 test) we used 'Serious Sam - The Second Encounter" and "Medal Of Honor" game titles. We performed both software/hardware EFM corrections test. The drive supports only software EFM correction. The drive doesn't limit its recording speed under DAO-RAW mode and writes up to 40x, with of course the proper media.