TopTenREVIEWS

TopTenREVIEWS - Silver Award - Awarded for excellence in design, useability and feature set

For a fast burn linked by FireWire, get Plextor PX-740UF, "TopTenREVIEWS Silver Award" winner. This program is compatible with almost all disc types and comes with Nero Software Suite.

Although PX-740UF is not Plextor's premium model PX-716UF, it is quick and competes with the best at a lower price than the high-end model. (We didn't include the PX-716UF in this review because of the large price difference).

However, if you need to work with DVD-RAM you may want to look at MegaSTOR, our top pick.

Feature Set:

Plextor PX-740UF is a flexible product that is compatible with PC and Macintosh and can connect by FireWire and USB 2.0 and 1.1 ports. The product comes with a one-year warranty.

It has a 2 MB buffer with underrun technology and can burn dual layer disks. This burner can read almost all disk types, including standard DVDs and CDs, CD-ROM XA, CD-TEXT, CD-I and CD-DA. The only disks that are not compatible with this drive are DVD-RAM and CD+G disks.

This burner comes with Nero Software Suite, which can edit videos, backup data, play DVDs and copy CDs. The only optional software not included, is a program for creating disk labels.

Burner Speed:

The burning speed of this product is one of the best; it can read or write any DVD at 16x and rewrites to DVD+RW (DL) format at 8x. It can also read, write and rewrite CDs rapidly.

The only disk that slows this burner down is the DVD-R DL, which burns at only 4x, whereas MegaSTOR burns at 6x.

Help/Support:

We contacted Plextor about their DVD burner and we received a response to our email 90 minutes later, this is by far the quickest response time we have received. In addition to email support, they also provide toll-free telephone support and post FAQs on their website.

Summary:

Plextor PX-740UF is a speedy, accommodating external DVD burner that does just about everything except burn Karaoke CDs.