detail information

• Very good specifications.
• Very good DVD-Writing and ReWriting quality.
• SolidBurn technology that works
• Supports overspeeding of all DVD+/-R if the media is good enough.
• Currently the speed king for writing DVD+R DL media.
• Excellent DVD+/-R DL writing quality and compatibility.
• Superb CD-Writing quality.
• Many extra features in QSuite.
• Supports disc quality checking.
• Supports bitsetting for DVD+R/RW/R9 DL.
• Good media compatibility.
• Supports writing/reading 99 minutes CD-R media.
• Drive has no riplock.
• Stable reader that rarely slows down when hitting scratches.
• Reads DVD+/-R media at 16x and DVD+/-RW media at 12x.
• Reads both pressed and recorded DL media at 12x.
• Working cooling solution.

Negative:

• CD-R media compatibility could be further improved.
• SolidBurn/OPC could be further improved to give even better results.
• Poor CD-RW writing quality.
• Some DVD-RW discs written by the BenQ DW1640 has compatibility issues with other drives.
• Poorly programmed tools and firmware updates - doesn't work on some systems with extra PCI IDE controllers.
• 16x DVD+R writing create PIE/PIF spikes near the end of the disc.
• 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW media compatibility needs improving.
• Other drives offer 6x DVD-R DL writing speed.

Conclusion:

How does this BenQ drive perform? The last BenQ drive we reviewed - the DW1625 - did not please us at all. But maybe BenQ has got it right this time? Mostly - yes. But let us summarize the most positive and negative points with this drive.

The main positive points: The most positive point will probably be that this drive is a very good all-rounder with almost no noticeable issues. The media compatibility is good, the writing quality is good to excellent with most media types and it offers very good reading speeds. QSuite also makes a nice addition to the drive as it offers many extra features. Overall it is one of the best - if not the best drive on the market right now. The drive also have a good cooling solution that seems to work, as it appears to operate a lot cooler than previous BenQ drives. The two new features added by firmware BSKB and later give the final touch. It supports overspeeding and in combination with SolidBurn this seems to make an excellent combination. If a disc is good enough for 16x, it will write at 16x. If not it will try next lower speed, than next speed and so on until it finds a suitable speed or the lowest writing speed is reached. A benefit of having to enable overspeeding and SolidBurn through QSuite is that newbie's and users that do not need or want to overspeeding don't need to worry about it as it's disabled by default. But power users that like to experiment will have no problems enabling these features through QSuite.

The main negative points: But as usual there are some negative points that we will like to mention. First point is not a serious issue, but a surprising issue; the drive creates PIE/PIF error spikes when writing DVD+R media at 16x, as one of the main promoters of the DVD+R format we had expected the DVD+R writing to be perfect. But the error spikes don't seem to be large enough to cause any reading issues. The OPC feature also seems to be a bit over-sensitive as some media did not write at certified speed. And like many other drives; the CD-RW writing quality is very poor and needs improving. We would also like to see support for Ritek 6x DVD-RW and MKM 8x DVD+RW media. For the MKM 8x DVD+RW media we were informed that it was not supported since it was pre-release media, so we could probably blame that problem on Mitsubishi.

To sum it all up, this is the best we could say: 'An unpolished diamond, the drive performs excellent in almost every area and offers features that really puts it ahead of the competition" We will probably never find a perfect drive, but this drive is among the better if not the best drive we have reviewed and we hand out our 'Editors Choice" award to it.

You may discuss/comment this review below or in this forum thread. This forum thread may also be used to ask questions around this drive or request additional tests.

Thanks to:

Bell Technology spol s.r.o. - Czech Republic for providing some of the media used in this review.

 Optodisc USA for sending the Acro Circle media used in this review.