CD Freaks has posted a thorough review of the first 12x DVD recordable drive, Plextor's PX-712A. Boasting write speeds of up to 12x on DVD+R and 8x on DVD-R media, the drive also writes DVD+RW and DVD-RW media at 4x, CD-R media at 48x, and CD-RW at 24x. With dual layer-capable drives hitting the market at the same time, is it worth it? Here's a snippet from the review:

The read performance of the PX-712A was great, especially with DVD media. The drive read all of our discs at 12x maximum and could read single layer DVD discs at 16x maximum. The drive also performed well with CD-ROM media although it did have some problems with audio discs. This was however the only problem we could find.

When it came to write performance we were very impressed by the drive. The Plextor PX-712A wrote all of our 4x DVD+R discs at 8x and, more importantly, it did so with good quality. The highest amount of errors were created with Ritek DVD+R discs but the amount of errors was still within the standards. All of the other discs we tested were perfectly written. You can also be sure that Plextor will often release new firmware versions that will improve the drive's media compatibility even more.

The price of the Plextor PX-712A is around US$ 180. Plextor drives have always been known to be more expensive than other drives but when we look at how well the drive performed and the great technologies it supports we think this price is more than justified.