Plextor PX-608AL review

The Plextor PX-608AL is an internal slot-loading DVD writer for use with laptops.

It's most likely to be of interest to laptop manufacturers looking for new drives for their wares, but there's nothing to stop you buying one to replace an ailing (or simply obsolete) drive in your own laptop.

Unfortunately, replacing a laptop optical drive isn't quite as simple as on a desktop PC, and there are a number of important considerations. Most laptops have a standard slimline optical drive bay into which the PX-608AL will fit, but you may need to transfer any custom mounting brackets from the old drive to the new so that it can be screwed (or otherwise locked) in place. If your old tray-loading drive has a custom bezel though, you're stuffed - there's simply no way to swap this to a slot-loading drive.

Just like with desktop optical drives, laptop drives can also be set to either Master or Cable Select (Slave tends not to be used), but they don't have a jumper switch for this. Instead, the setting is made in the drive's firmware and cannot be easily changed by an end-user. The PX-608AL is set to Cable Select out of the box and as long as your laptop expects the same setting, the drive will work without any difficulty. If your laptop uses a different setting, however, the drive won't work and nor will its hard disk, so check what setting your laptop expects before buying (the manufacturer website is a good place to start).

With all these conditions met, the PX-608AL turns in a sterling performance. Since there are no external moving parts, the drive is far less prone to accidental damage and the slot-loading mechanism makes an effective barrier against dust and grime. Discs load and eject in seconds, although the drive is noisier than most tray-loading models when it's spinning.

While it's worth paying attention to what disc formats a DVD writer can handle when the time comes to buy a new one, it's long since become futile to worry about how fast it works - any new drive is fast enough for anyone. Suffice it to say that the PX-608AL both reads and writes to all current CD and DVD formats, including the less common DVD-RAM. It's not the cheapest laptop DVD-writer around, but Plextor's standard two-year collect-and-return warranty is worth paying a small premium for.