Plextor has been associated with optical drives for a long time, with a name for producing well built, full featured CD-R/RW drives with good performance. The PX-504A is the company's first DVD recorder and it certainly keeps up the tradition of build quality and performance.

Based on a modified NEC ND-1100, it uses the DVD+R/+RW format and is one of the few drives around that offers 4-speed DVD+R and 2.4-speed DVD+RW writing speeds, while reading DVDs at a maximum of 12-speed. The CD performance is as good as any other DVD recorder; it writes CDs at 16-speed, rewrites at 10-speed and reads at 32-speed.

Plextor has made the PX-504A stand out from the rest of the range by the simple addition of a black strip of plastic along the bottom of the tray. OK, it's not much, but it makes a difference aesthetically. The front panel contains no surprises, though; eject button, volume control and headphone socket are all present and correct. Nor does the rear panel disappoint, with the usual IDE connector, jumper block, and analogue/digital audio outputs.

Plextor has added support for its PoweRec (Plextor Optimised Writing Error Reduction Control - a strained acronym if ever we saw one) to the PX-504A, which allows you to record a CD at the highest speed possible while ensuring the finished disc will be readable in all CD-ROM drives.

The drive is an RPC-2 unit which means you can only change the drive's region five times. Unfortunately there is no patch for the firmware at present, but expect that to change once the drive's been on the market for a while.

The software supplied includes all you need to burn, create and watch DVDs. You get Roxio Easy CD Creator 5.3 DVD Edition, Roxio PhotoSuite 5.0SE and CyberLink PowerDVD 4.0XP. For good measure you also get a trial version of Dantz Retrospect Backup Pro 6, a comprehensive backup program. Also in the box are an IDE cable, mounting screws, emergency eject tool, a 4-speed DVD+R disc and a 48-speed, 80-minute CD-R disc.