Review: Plextor PX-W4824A
Reviewer: G@M3FR3@K
Provided by: Plextor Europe
Firmware: version 1.00
Production date: August 2002
TLA#: 0000

A few weeks ago Plextor announced its latest recorder, the Plextor PX-W4824A. This drive is one of the fastest recorders available today and is the first Plextor drive to support the new ultra speed CD-ReWriting standard with which it’s possible to re-write at an amazing speed of 24X.

Of course this new Plextor drive has much more to offer than just increased re-write speeds. Some new and improved features include the fastest access time ever (< 65ms), Mount Rainier support and 48X CAV recording of data and audio. Some major changes compared to their previous model, the Plextor PX-W4012A since this drive had rather high access times, no Mount Rainier support, used the Z-CLV write method and was limited to writing audio at ‘just’ 24X.

In this review we will take a thorough look at this latest Plextor drive and see if it can live up to the ‘Plextor standards’. During this review we will also explain some of the decisions Plextor took with this new drive such as why the drive is by default limited to 40X reading instead of 48X it can reach. Read on to find out what we have to say about this new and improved (?) Plextor drive!

Test Machine:

For the tests we’ll be using the following configuration:

Hardware:

Motherboard: ASUS K7V
Processor: AMD Athlon 700Mhz
RAM: 256MB (PC133)
GFX: ASUS V8200 (GeForce 3 Ti200)
Hard Disks: DiamondMax 40GB & 30GB (7200rpm)
IDE Controller: PCI UDMA100 Controller
USB Controller: NEC USB 2.0 Controller

System set-up:

As you can see the Plextor PX-W4824A was hooked up to the (onboard) secondary IDE-controller and identifies itself as “PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W4824A”. DMA was automatically enabled and autorun has been disabled. The listed Plextor PX-W4012A and Toshiba SD-M1502 drives are hooked up to the PCI UDMA100 controller. All drives, including the PX-W4824A drive, support UDMA33.

Used Software:

The Windows XP Professional operating system is installed on our test machine. We’ll be using the following software to perform the various tests:

On the next page we’ll take a look at the retail package of the Plextor PX-W4824A…

The Package

7 Comments

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 26 Sep 02 22:23

Quote:

Negative Points: DAE and CD-RW reading is limited to about 42X

AND YOU WOULD CALL THIS BAD?!?!?!? i know it is *a*little* different from what they claimed, but it is a fuc*ing high reading speed!

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 27 Sep 02 00:50

Great review as always!

I wonder why Plextor bothered to implement this SpeedRead thing when the difference is so small (max. 46x vs. max. 42x) Surely this small difference can't be so much more dangerous? Other than that it seems like a huge improvement over the Plextor 40x. btw. why not use CD Speed 1.00, it supports 99min discs.

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 27 Sep 02 10:18

@cico85: Plextor drives have always been considered to be the fastest DAE drives available. Their 40X model could already do DAE at 42X so we were a little disappointed. There are other drives nowadays that can do DAE at 48X without problems. So yes it's a negative point. @cdrfreak: Nero CD Speed v1.00 didn't work so well for us as we had some problems with our tests. Transfer Speed didn't go faster than 24X for instance.. So for the time being we decided to use good old v0.85e.

roadworker: Posts: 749; Posted on: 27 Sep 02 16:31

Good review! The Plex seems to b a decent drive.....IF the price was lower..there are drives that can "handle" much more protections,for a much lower price,.... Sorry Plextor,you can't sell a drive to me..:4

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 30 Oct 02 14:49

Nice review! I already ordered one. The price €134,95 was also nice ....... :*

tkvetter: Posts: 1; Posted on: 14 Nov 02 23:06

Please Compare the plextor 48/24/48 to the teac 540A. I am deciding between the two. i don't care as much about speed, or noise as i do about good backups of a large variety of media. Compare, Contrast.... Thanks for you help in advance.... T

guest: Posts: 15288; Posted on: 20 May 07 03:55

i searched how do i copy copy-protected playstation discs. I already have a dvd burner, I don't want another one, I just wanna know how I can copy games which i cannot copy eg. tomb raider 2. hit me back soon. thanx.

Plextor PX-W4824A

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