Sony DRU-720A: Speed Increases All Around

Final Thoughts

The DRU-720A performed much better than the year-older DRU-710A in almost every area. It performed flawlessly with both the MCC 004 and Ritek R04 16x media, which is just a start, since it is a 16x DVD+R burner. We did not have any 16x DVD-R media on hand for this review, but we did test some 8x Ritek media. The Ritek R03 and G05 media burned at the full 8x speed by the P-CAV method. The DRU-710A that we had looked at in our 16x roundup did write to these media significantly quicker because it picked up to 8x faster at the beginning of the write process. We also tested the Philips C08 DVD+R media, which, when scanned with PlexTools, showed an extremely small amount of PI errors.

The DRU-720A also handled our 4x Ritek DVD+RW media well and burned it at the full 4x speed, but the drive had some trouble with the DVD-RW flavor of the Ritek media, only getting as high as 2x speeds during the write process. PlexTools showed a close to flawless burn, however, which is what really matters in the end.

The most significant improvement, whether it be from an improved firmware version or chipset, was the ability to write to dual layer media successfully, let alone cleanly. The DRU-710A burned a few dual layer coasters, which really disappointed us considering what we would pay for the drive, but Sony has since then improved on their firmware, and with the DRU-720A, writing to dual layer media is not a problem. Our Verbatim brand 2.4x MKM 001 media had the least PI errors with the majority being on the first layer, and data was written at 4x speeds throughout the burn. The DRU-720A did, however, have issues writing to the Ritek D01 media. The drive could not hit speeds above about 2.4x and when read with PlexTools, we saw that the media had almost 2 million PI errors towards the end of the 1 st layer.

With the current firmware on the drive and a retail price of around $105 at certain online retailers, the DRU-720A seems a bit expensive for a drive with this type of performance. Both NEC and Pioneer, the winners of our Fall 2004 16x roundup, have newer versions of their drives out at this time and we’re assuming that they will perform just as well as the units which we had a chance to look at. Before we make any decisions, we’d like to wait until we look at those other drives to weigh their performance and price. But at this time, the DRU-720A still seems over-priced for the performance that we’re getting out of it. Hopefully, by the time that we have units from the other big name optical storage manufacturers, Sony will have an updated firmware out as well as a lower, more competitive price.