I ordered. I received. I opened. I installed. I burned. Wow.

This was my first great experience with any burner after having dealt with burners for 2-3 years now and with 4 different burners.

Physical Quality

The packaging was simple yet very protective of the unit. Plextor even tells you to save the packaging if you ever need to send it back (though they say they hope you don't ever need to, haha) because the packaging has been tested and drop-proof.

The unit feels very sturdy, and the stickers on the unit itself tell a lot about the drive. Not like other drives where the drive isn't even manufactured by them.

Ease of Installation

I know my computer inside and out so installation was a breeze for me. Plextor included 4 mounting screws, installation instructions, an IDE cable, and an extra jumper in case you lose the one on the drive already. The entire installation took me about 10 minutes. I install the drive, leave the case open, boot up, pop in a CD to test readability, and close up shop.

Plextor recommends that the drive not be on the same IDE cable as another CD-ROM in case you want to copy CDs from drive to drive. They say it is faster when the two drives are on different IDEs (primary and secondary).

Software Included

They include Plextor's own CD utilities, such as a CD-player, and copying software and also Adaptec's Easy CD Creator 4. Although Adaptec is known for spotty software, I have never had a problem with Easy CD Creator 4 even with other burners. The software installed without a hitch and I was ready to go after one reboot, though I hate rebooting after installing hardware.

The Burn

That day I tested 3 burns before I left for a trip. They all went with no problems. I didn't even use the CD-R media it came with, but media that I had left over from before. The media I used was not marked 12X Write, but it sure did write at 12X! I burned 2 software CDs and 1 audio. The audio one was burned directly from MP3 format and was decoded during the burn with EZ CD Creator. Because of my slower CPU in my computer this process left the buffer from 0-10% full at any time during the burn (this was the audio burn). With any other burner unit this would have stopped the burn immediately and I would have had to power off the computer and restart it just to get it to work again. But not with BurnProof! BurnProof allows the buffer to run dry without ever getting a buffer underrunn error. Buffer underrun is when the buffer of the drive (2MB on this unit, the 12/10/32A) is empty and the drive cannot write data. This leads to a halt and in most cases, the system needs to be reset. BurnProof remembers the position of the burn when the buffer goes to zero and when the buffer has data in it again it resumes where it left off. What a great idea. The audio burn had no skips even at 12X with the buffer close to zero the entire burn! Amazing. Just for the record, the 2 data burns went with no problems either.

I have not tested the ReWrite capabilities of this drive yet, but with my first out-of-the-box impressions, I think ReWriting will go without problems just the same.

Media Restrictions

I had another drive that required a certain brand of media to burn at full speed. On that drive, the only media that burned at full speed was the media that shipped with it. With the PlexWriter 12/10/32A I used a different media right off the bat and I had no problems. This is a true wonder.

Now I can try other media with different color dyes. My CD changer in my car was sensitive to the dye on the CD-Rs I was forced to use with my other burner. Now I'm free.

Speed of Normal Data Access

The data access time of this drive is fast as well. Data/Audio extraction is even faster than my DVD drive now. Super!

Price

I paid $198 for this drive. But if you can afford the standard $229 retail, I would definitely go for it. Once you've tried burn proof, you'll never want to go back. Plextor's lower model drives like the 8X write ones don't have this great feature. But if you want any burner, I'd go with a plextor any day.

Excellence and Reliability

Plextor has truly made me a believer. I will be very reluctant if I ever get a laptop as my primary machine to go with another brand of burner. But as long as I have a desktop as my primary machine it's Plextor all the way. Another sign of excellence is the noise level of the drive. Almost no noise at all. My previous burner made all kinds of funny noises while accessing and writing and spinning up.

I now know that when I want to burn something in a pinch I can have my computer spit it out in under 7 minutes!



Recommended: Yes