Plextor PX-708UF

Recordable DVDs have really taken off now that the price of the media and the drives has reached sensible levels. More of us are using the format to make movie and photo discs that we can share with both our clients and friends.

Despite its increased popularity, there have been a couple of issues that have hindered the more widespread acceptance of DVD, namely speed and compatibility. DVDs can hold up to 4.7GB of data, which naturally takes some time to write to disc, effectively locking up your Mac or PC during recording. Second, there are three DVD formats doing the rounds at the moment – DVD-R, DVD+R and DVD RAM. The two most popular are DVD-R and DVD+RW, but they aren’t compatible and so the flexibility to burn in either format would help.

The Plextor PX-708UF offers a solution to the twin problems of speed and compatibility. First, it’s an 8x DVD+R drive, which means that it can slice through a full DVD in less than ten minutes. Second, it can also write to DVD-R/RW, albeit at only 4x speeds. It also doubles as a 40x CD writer, which probably makes it the fastest multi-format drive of its kind on the market.

The PX-708UF is particularly versatile around the office, because it’s a highly luggable external unit. This means you can cart it between computers as and when you need to write a project to disc. This makes it ideal for sharing with work colleagues on the fly, and generally backing up hard drives. Better still, because both FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces are included, it will work with both PCs and Macs, although the supplied software is for PCs only. Highlights of the bundled applications include Pinnacle Studio and Nero. Sadly, the device won’t work with Apple’s iDVD, but it will function quite happily with DVD Studio Pro and Toast.

One major drawback, however, is the noise of the case fan in the drive. It’s obtrusive and you certainly wouldn’t want to have it switched on all the time. Plextor needs to fix this problem before the PX-708UF can score maximum marks.