Conclusion

The Ricoh MP7120A will possibly trouble possible buyers, who are looking to get the fastest drive that they can buy. BURN-Proof or not? Common sense says "Go for the BURN-Proof enabled" drive. However, if you carefully examine the MP7120A you could possibly have a tough choice. A direct comparison with the PleXWriter PX-W1210A and the Sanyo CRD-BP3 is not fair if you consider that Plextor and Sanyo drives are technological advanced (due to the adoption of BURN-Proof technology). But since all 3 drives have the same price tag we feel that we must take the user's point of view..

Should I buy or not? What is cool about the drive and what is not?

What's cool:
- Great DAE speed (32x max)
- Superb RW and Packet Writing performance
- Good read performance
- Reliable reading as shown in our CDR tests
- Supports DAO and SAO RAW writing, with CloneCD, (most drive in the market place will not.)

What's not cool:
- Doesn't support any anti-coaster protection. We cannot pretend that you will never get any coasters using the drive when using lots of software at once.
- Returns more bad sectors when reading protected CDs. That indicates a problem, which of course can be fixed with next firmware revision
- Failed to recognize 90min media. Oops! That also can be fixed with next firmware version.

We feel that "BURN-Proof" technology has really changed the way people burn their CDs. People who have already tested "BURN-Proof" enabled drives say that they would never go back to previous generation drives. This is what they tell us at www.cdrinfo.com! Ricoh's answer to Sanyo's BURN-Proof is called "JustLink". However the MP7120A doesn't include it. This is what will cause problems troubles for buyers when they are evaluating this model. If the Ricoh 7120A had "JustLink" incorporated then it would be a drive that would be very real alternative to the PleXWriter PX-W1210A. However, it doesn't and this is a real shame.

- Do you want a CDR-W drive that can read/write data to both CDR and RW media at very impressive speeds? Don't care about new technologies, which eliminate coasters? If the answer is yes-Go for the Ricoh MP7120A!
- Do want to burn data at the maximum possible speed without any concern about possible coasters? Go for the Plextor PX-W1210A.

We didn't included CRD-BP3 drive to our buying comparison plans since the drive is not selling directly from Sanyo. You could possible get it from Iomega, IODATA, Logitec, Lacie. You can buy the drive directly from Ricoh's on-line store at $279.00 We also found a cheaper price (259$) over Price Watch so might want to check it out.