PLEXTOR PX-716A review

After last month's DVD writer head-to-head, we've been inundated with 16X DVD recorders.

This month we bring you LG's GSA-4153B, Philips' DVDR1620 and Plextor's PX-716A.

All the drives write DVD+R at 16X speeds, although we found that the difference in write times was large. The LG wrote a full disc in five minutes 32 seconds and the Philips in five minutes 49, while the Plextor lagged far behind, taking 6 minutes 29 seconds - a disappointing result.

The Philips can write DVD-R discs at a slow 8X, but both LG and Plextor write at 16X. No media are available for this at the moment, so we were unable to test performance here.

As DVD burners are being used more often to record movies, double-layer performance is an important factor. Unfortunately, the Philips drive is only a 2X model and took 45 minutes 45 seconds to write 8.5GB. The LG and Plextor drives have 4X writing speeds, and both drives completed our test in around 26 minutes. Only the Toshiba SD-R5372, which we reviewed last month, managed to complete the test in a faster time.

We tested the rewrite speeds of the drives using 4X media, which is all that's available at the moment. All the drives completed our write test in around 15 minutes for both DVD+RW and DVD-RW. However, the Philips drive was left behind again: it writes both types of disc at just 4X, while Plextor's drive can manage DVD+RW at 8X and the LG writes DVD-RW at 6X and DVD+RW at 8X.

LG's drive also supports DVD-RAM. This may not be very useful for newcomers, but owners of older DVD-RAM drives will be pleased with the full range of support this drive gives.

All three drives are bundled with our favourite DVD authoring software, Nero Suite 6. All the drives come with mounting cables and IDE cables, but Plextor takes things a step further by supplying two bezels, one black and one white. This is good news if you have a black case as you don't have to ruin its appearance with a shiny white drive.

Both price and features will influence your buying decision. Plextor's PX-716A is a solid enough drive with decent performance across all media types, bar DVD+R, which was unusually slow. However, it's one of the most expensive drives on the market.

Philips' DVDR1620 is similarly expensive and has very slow double-layer performance and only 4X rewrite speeds, so it's hard to recommend. The outstanding drive in this small group is LG's GSA 4163B. It performed well with the media we tried, and has the best specification on paper, too. When faster media are available, its performance should increase accordingly. Considering the low price and support for all formats, it's a bargain.