The chaps over at CDRLabs.com have just published an other very interesting review. This time they tested Plextors first 18x DVD burner, the PX-760A. For those who not know, this drive supports 18x DVD+/-R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 10x DVD+R DL and 6x DVD-R DL writing speeds. Here's a taster:

Without a doubt, what the PX-760A does best is write DVD's. When writing to DVD+R and DVD-R media at 18x, it took the drive less than 6 minutes to burn an entire 4.7GB DVD. While an impressive feat, this wasn't enough to top the LG GSA-4167B and its P-CAV writing method. Plextor's new drive also did pretty well in our rewriting tests, turning in some very good times with both DVD-RW and DVD+RW media. Even more impressive was the PX-760A's DVD+R DL writing performance. Thanks to its 10x writing speed, the drive took a little more than 15 minutes to burn an entire 8.5GB DVD.

If you want to write at 18x on the PX-760A, be aware that the list of supported media is very short. Out of all the media we tried, only three types were capable of this speed. The drive faired much better when writing at 16x. However, there were a few cases where PoweRec kicked in, preventing it from reaching this speed. The PX-760A's writing quality was also pretty good for the most part. With most of our test media, the error rates stayed well within acceptable limits, even when writing at 18x. There is still room for improvement though, especially with Ritek manufactured media.

Well, the only other feature the PX-760 boasts is 10x DVD+R DL burning, but there are other writers that have this feature now. Burn quality is not really any better than that of various other ODD manufacturers like BenQ, Pioneer and LG. At the price Plextor drives cost, it really doesn't seem worth it to get this drive.