The parade of rewritable Blu-ray Disc drives continues with the introduction of Plextor's PX-B900A. I looked at a shipping version of this drive, and it is impressive. At $999, it costs more than competing models, but you get a well-rounded software bundle in the box.
The Plextor offering writes to most flavors of CD, DVD, and Blu-ray Disc. The drive is rated at 2X speed for both single-layer 25GB and double-layer 50GB write-once BD-R and rewritable BD-RE. It also can handle 8X DVDR, 8X DVD+RW, 6X DVD-RW, 5X DVD-RAM, 24X CD-R, and 16X CD-RW.
The InterVideo/Ulead software collection is one of the best bundles I've seen accompanying a Blu-ray Disc burner. You get WinDVD BD for watching Blu-ray movie discs, WinDVD for watching standard DVDs, Ulead VideoStudio 10SE for video editing and disc authoring, DVD MovieFactory 5SE for authoring and burning video and photo discs, Burn.Now 1.5 for burning data discs, BD DiscRecorder for burning high-definition content directly from a disc, and Data-Add 2.0 for packet writing.
The drive's write-once performance was in keeping with what we have seen from the other two Blu-ray Disc burners we've reviewed thus far, I-O Data's BRD-UM2/U and Pioneer's BDR-101A: The Plextor PX-B900A took 44 minutes, 35 seconds to master 22GB of data to BD-R, and 99 minutes to format a BD-RE and packet-write 22GB to disc--about the same as the other drives we've tested.
If you're eager for a Blu-ray Disc burner, the Plextor PX-B900A drive is a solid--albeit expensive--choice.
Melissa J. Perenson
Plextor PX-B900A
Internal Blu-ray burner offers an excellent software bundle, but its high price limits its appeal.
Price when reviewed: $999
Current prices (if available)