Plextor PX-LB950SA

Plextor PX-LB950SA

We’ve been recommending Plextor’s B940SA 12x drive on our Best of the Best list for more than a year now, so we were delighted to receive a challenger that could shake things up—even if it was another Plextor drive. Hey, why not build on that good track record? Our excitement waned, however, when the drive we received—Plextor’s PX-LB950SA—bore the exact same specs as its predecessor. Granted, a BD-R write speed of anything greater than 12x is somewhat pointless given that BD-R media is currently capped at 6x, but still, throw us a bone here. Plextor says improvements come in the form of upgraded mechanics that make the drive quieter and cooler. That’s all well and good, but we hadn’t actually noticed the predecessor being particularly noisy or hot. Presumably, though, these mechanical tweaks will add to the drive’s lifespan. Plextor also touts this drive’s support for Blu-ray 3D, but that only means that the bundled CyberLink PowerDVD 9 offers such support—any Blu-ray drive faster than 2x is capable of supporting 3D on the hardware side. Such improvements were of little consolation to us when we discovered that the PX-LB950SA’s Blu-ray burning performance was actually a bit weaker than the drive it’s replacing.