External Blu-ray burners come in all shapes and sizes, but internal drives have no such freedom – they’re constrained by the physical dimensions of a 5.25in drive bay, and all buttons and LEDs must face forward. Such drives are usually differentiated only by their price, performance and audible output.
Plexor’s PX-LB950SA has a similar specification to its rivals. It can write to standard 25GB BD-R discs at 12-speed, to 50GB BD-R DL discs at eight-speed, and BD-RE discs at two-speed.
The Plextor’s blisteringly fast 12-speed write potential is a moot point, since the fastest media available is rated at six-speed. In our testing with TDK media, however, we found the write speed rose steadily as the burn progressed.
Using four-speed TDK media, the Plextor recorded our 21GB of data in a very good 19 mins 50 secs; its result using six-speed Verbatim media was slower, at 22 mins 1 sec.
Verdict: Plextor’s PX-LB950SA is by far one of the fastest internal drives we've tested when using four-speed TDK media, but its lead over its rivals narrows with six-speed Verbatim discs. It’s not especially noisy either, but we were less impressed with its price tag.
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