Digital Trends

Sony DRU-700A

September 1st, 2004 | by Ian Bell

Setup and Use

Sony includes both a detailed and a quick start guide to get you going with the installation process of the DRU-700A. We found both manuals to be well written and easy to following. Physically installing the drive is a relatively simple process and does not require any special instructions other than making the drive the first one on the IDE channel.

Once the drive is installed you will want to run the software CD which comes with the unit. Sony uses their own setup menu so you can access the software you want easily. In previous models of Sony's DVD writer line, they used software from multiple companies such as Sonic and MusicMatch, so you had to install each program individually. This time around, you still have to install each application individually, but because they are all part of the Nero suite, you just have one menu screen.

The setup menu for the Sony DRU700A software

We are big fans of the Nero software and think they make some of the best CD and DVD recording software available. Nero is at times not as intuitive and as easy to use as Roxio's Easy CD & DVD Creator software, but it is more powerful and certainly faster. Nero's Burning ROM 6 SE software is what you will probably use the most. It is fast and easy to use and we did not encounter in media incompatibilities or slowdowns while writing our media. Nero's InCD 4 packet writing software is pretty solid and reliability, but may not be a necessity if you are used to using Microsoft's own packet writing software which is integrated into their Windows XP operating systems.

The Nero software suite covers everything you should need

The rest of Nero's software including their DVD editing, and backup software are not as strong as stand alone packages you can buy separately, but for the casual user, they still work very well. Nero's Showtime software is similar to WinDVD or Cyberlinks PowerDVD software, but not as good in our opinion. Overall, the software suite which Sony packages with the DRU-700A is the best we have seen with a DVD writer in a long time.

In our tests, the DRU-700A did not prove to be the speed demon we had hoped it would be. Trailing the Plextor 708A and Sony's own DRU-530A in most write tests, the DRU-700A did hold its own and was not too far behind. We are only talking a few seconds difference in most cases. When it came to recording CD audio though, the DRU-700A did launch to the head of the pack. The most important thing to note is that the DRU-700A proved to be a very reliable drive, and it is consistent in its write times.

In our Dual Layer writing tests, it took our DRU-700A almost 41 minutes to write a 7.16GB directory. Since this is our first Dual Layer DVD writer, we had nothing to compare it to. We can tell you that at 2.4X, 41 minutes felt like an eternity. We will upgrade the graph and this review once we get our hands on more Dual Layer DVD writers. We do expect 2.4X to be the speed standard for this generation of DVD writers from all manufacturers.