The Plextor PlexWriter 48/24/48U External Hi-Speed USB 2.0 CD-RW Drive
Speedy Burning On The Go

Jay Gibson
December 29, 2002

Benchmarks  with The PlexWriter 40/12/40U The Benchmarks just keep on flying...

Nero CD Speed - Audio:

During this part of the testing process, both drives fared better with the recorded audio disc. Yet again, the external drive pulled into the lead by averaging a speed of 31.53x and as with the Data CD tests, lead the pack in seek times, with the exception of full seek, in which the internal drive scored better by a hair.  The internal drive on the other hand cleaned up, with lower CPU usage and a much higher Burst Rate.

MP3 Encoding With Nero Express:

Using the same Audio CD from the test above, we proceeded to rip all 18 tracks to the hard drive of our test system using the "mp3PRO" Encoder Plug-in that is included with the Nero software. For the numbers below we used your average stopwatch that started right when we pressed "Go" and stopped it when the encoding was completed.

This part of the testing clearly shows the difference between internal and external data transfer performance. Above one can clearly see that the Internal drive stomped the External by 2:16. The reason for this large gap in performance, is the difference in burst rate between the two drives, as we saw in the CD Speed Audio test. The internal drive pushes 16MB/s while the external can only throw down about 8MB/s.

Disc Copy with Nero 5.5.9.17

For the last part of testing, we burned a single 600MB zip file to a CD using Nero 5.5.9.17. This part of the testing always blows me away.  It still amazes me that just the difference in CD media used, effects burn time so drastically.  If you draw your attention to the data in the chart above, you can see that the external drive managed to out perform the internal drive.  We found this particularly interesting, considering that the data transfer rates between USB and ATA are so different. Unfortunately we were unable to get our hands on any TDK media, to compare with the other times of the internal drive. 

Currently the Plextor PX-W4824TU/SW is listed for about $145 - $190 USD, on various price search engines. With the level of performance, quality of construction and overall feel this drive, it's not hard to justify that cost structure. The burn quality with various types of media, was also very solid. Not producing a single "coaster" throughout all the testing, even when we tried to produce one by invoking various multi-tasking stresses, was quite surprising. When compared to the other external drives currently available on the market, we can we can whole heartedly suggest this drive.

So, for overall quality, price, performance and features, we are awarding the Plextor 48x24x48x USB 2.0 Hi-Speed External CD-RW drive a 9 out of 10 on the Heat Meter scale.

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