Plextor PX-LB950UE review

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Verdict:

The USB3 and eSATA connections make little difference to write times, but the PX-LB950UE is still an affordable and fairly quick Blu-ray writer

Review Date: 4 Aug 2011

Price when reviewed: £140

Supplier: http://www.amazon.co.uk

Reviewed By: Alan Lu

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

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The PX-LB950UE is an unusual external Blu-ray writer. Instead of the usual USB2 connection, it has both USB3 and eSATA ports. If you're expecting a huge speed boost from this then you'll be disappointed. Its speeds in our disc burning tests were no faster than any other modern Blu-ray writer we've seen, whether we connected the PX-LB950UE via USB3 or eSATA.

Single layer DVDs were written at around 10X while two layer DVDs were written at just over 5X. Single-layer write-once Blu-ray discs were written at just over 5X, while rewritable variants are stuck at a sluggish 2X. 50GB write-once Blu-ray discs were written at 3X. Although some of these speeds are slower than Plextor's stated speeds, this is to be expected, as we were unable to test with the currently rare 12X rated Blu-ray BD-R discs. Overall, the drive's speeds are around average.

Although the PX-LB950UE won't set any speed records, it's still an inexpensive and attractive external Blu-ray writer. It also comes with disc writing and Blu-ray playback software from CyberLink so it has everything you need in the box. If you need to replace an old or faulty DVD writer or need to archive huge amounts of data, then the PX-LB950UE is a good choice.

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