StorageReview heeft 2 Plextor CDRW drives gereviewed. Het gaat hier om de PX-W124TSi en de PX-W1210TA. De eerste van de 2 is een 12x4x32 SCSI brander met een 4MB grote cache. De tweede drive is een 12x10x32 IDE brander. Opmerkelijk is het kleine 2MB cache, dit is te verklaren door de aanwezige BURN-Proof techniek waardoor geen cd meer hoeft te mislukken. Het is jammer dat de SCSI drive deze feature moet missen. De review van de PX-W124TSi is hier te lezen, en de review van de PX-W1210TA hier. De verschillen tussen beide drives:
Plextor's ATAPI contender comes to the table with many of the same specs as the recently reviewed PX-W124TSi SCSI burner. For example, it writes at a maximum of 12X CLV, reads CDs at 14X-32X CAV speeds, and includes the same 1-year warranty with unlimited toll-free tech support as well as nearly identical accessories in the retail package. For details on included accessories, as well as our impressions of the included Plextor Manager 2000 software, please read the Introduction of our PX-W124TSi review. Finally, like the 12/4/32, this drive also includes a digital CD audio out
Differences include the BURN-Proof technology, 10X rewrite speeds, ATAPI interface, as well as the lack of a fan and only a single LED (cost-cutting choices, no doubt). The LED is set up to illuminate green when the drive is idle with media inserted; yellow when a disc is being read from; and amber when a disc is being written to. This took some getting used to, as every time we saw the green light, we thought the drive was busy when in fact it was idle (just displaying that there was a disc in the drive). Also different are the specified random access times (at 150ms, 10ms quicker than the 12/4/32), the buffer size (2048KB vs. the 12/4/32's 4096KB)
[break]Een hap uit de conclusie van de PX-W124TSi[/break]
Conclusion
Being as it's our first burner review, we currently have nothing to compare Plextor's 12/4/32 SCSI unit to. However, based on its own merits, we found this drive to perform quite adequately. We encountered no serious issues and test results were more or less as expected.
Our main issue is with the drive's read speeds. We were fairly underwhelmed with its 32X read performance. In fact, we found that it significantly underperformed other 32X readers in our database. However, given the nature and intended use of this drive, we doubt many folks will be buying this to be their main CD-ROM reader. In this light, we do not place much emphasis on its sluggish application-level read speeds.
Writing and rewriting abilities are what this drive is all about. Performance was at or near expectations in all of our timed tests. We were also pleased with its performance in our Unreal Tournament stress test, but wonder how significant its seemingly poor performance in the CPUmark99 stress test is. We will find out as we get our hands on more of the competition.
[break]En een hap uit de conclusie van de PX-W1210TA[/break]
Conclusion.
What can we say? Sanyo's BURN-Proof technology, as licensed and implemented by Plextor, just plain works. Even our most stringent stress test could not create a coaster with this drive. Performance was excellent across the board…read speeds at 32X are closer to what we've come to expect from dedicated 32X readers, and writing performance was excellent as well. We were especially pleased with the 10X rewrite performance. Those who use CD-RWs a lot will notice a huge boost in performance. Keep in mind, though, that your existing media will still work at only 4X. You'll need to use the included high speed CD-RW until such media becomes more widely available. We've yet to see these in retail stores yet, only online.
Our complaints are few and far between. A single LED that varies its coloration according to what the drive is doing is a great concept. However, in practice we weren't as impressed. We had a difficult time telling between yellow (drive reading) and green (disc in drive, not being read). The amber write color was easily distinguishable, however. In our opinion, splurging for a second LED might've been a better choice. In addition, we feel the buffer could be larger. Sure, BURN-Proof will nearly always save the day, but an extra 2 megs (like most of today's burners have) would keep things running smoothly when the going gets especially tough. The pauses and slowdowns (as BURN-Proof kicks in) would be less frequent, and Sanyo's new technology wouldn't get as much of a workout. Of course, this only applies if you regularly abuse your system while burning CDs…in our experience most light-to-medium computing tasks aren't enough to drain the 2 meg buffer. Finally, we wonder why Plextor chose not to include CD Res-Q with this drive when it's included with the SCSI 12/4/32.
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En daarvoor moet je dan echt tegelijkertijd netscape en staroffice starten, een kernel compilen, de webserver in een loopje laten starten en stoppen en ondertussen een groot plaatje laten renderen met povray of the GIMP. 
. Eens kijken of de prijs niet te hoog wordt, anders denk ik dat ik m'n 4220 maar eens in ga ruilen.
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