14 DAY TRIAL // Blu-ray may be on track to becoming mainstream, but it is still some way off, especially on the portable ODD market, where DVD drives, like the ones just released by Plextor, still reign supreme, so to speak.
The market for external and/or portable optical disk drives has now received its latest member.
Over the past years, quite a few DVD units have been released, along with even Blu-ray devices, almost all of them using the USB connection.
Granted, the SuperSpeed USB 3.0 has still been mostly avoided by such storage solutions, mostly because the data transfer benefit would not justify the added price.
This is different from HDDs and SSDs, which can safely say they can reach transfer rates worthy of the 5 Gbps bandwidth of SuperSpeed ports.
Regardless, Plextor has put together its latest portable DVD writer, whose name is PX-L611U and which uses the USB 2.0 interface.
It can burn DVD disks at speeds of up to 8xm while the maximum CD scribing rate is of 24x.
The official press release places the buffer memory at 2 MB and also points out the existence of the LightScribe technology, which can burn customized labels on any compatible disk.
All these features are packed inside a frame measuring 137 x 22 x 137 mm and weighing 330 grams.
'Reliable hardware is enhanced by a strong software bundle including PlexUtilities,” says the company's announcement.
“This easy to use, but powerful application has multiple uses, like testing and quality measurement of user written or pressed media, advanced drive and disc information, control and fine-tuning of the drive.”
Availability of the Plextor PX-L611U in Europe should ramp up this very month, for the price of 59 Euro. Nero 9 Essentials, an extra suite of software used for disk burning and media playback, should be included in the bundle.