detail information

The specifications of the BenQ DW1640 state that the drive is able to write CD-R discs at 48x. Let us find out how the drive really performs in speed and quality.

Writing Data CD-R discs:

Let us first take a look at the CD-R write technology used by the BenQ DW1640:

As we could see, the BenQ DW1640 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write at its rated speed of 48x, this gives an average speed of 35.20x. Look below for comparison with two other drives.

The Mad Dog MD-16XDVD9 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) to write at its rated speed of 48x. This gives an average speed of 36.38x.

As we could see the Plextor PX-712A uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) writing strategy to reach it rated speed of 48X. This gives an average speed of 36.43x.

And as a last test we wrote a disc containing 700Mb using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non multi-session disc with 'finalize disc" enabled.

The BenQ DW1640 used 2 minutes and 48 seconds to write the disc at 48x. Let us see how this compares to other drives:

Very good, but still lags 10 seconds or so behind most other 48x writers due to the walking OPC feature. But maybe the walking OPC feature will be able to keep the writing quality good?

Write Quality:

We will test CD-R discs from a total of 8 different CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed, we used the 'create data CD" function in Nero CD-Speed. The discs were written at the maximum speed that the drive supports. For the quality test, we used K-Probe 2 which is a tool developed by a Lite-On employee. It runs under Windows and works with drives made by Lite-On. Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. We used a Lite-On LTR-52246S drive with firmware 6S0F and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

A written CD-R disc will always have some C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the drive's error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most drive's error correction capabilities; they are not wanted on a good quality disc. A good disc should not contain any C2 errors, and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 for the best discs, or at least C1 average below 10.0 for good quality discs. After C2 errors there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

Why wait any longer? Below are the obtained results:

The CMC Magnetics discs seem to be pretty good; they work excellent with the BenQ DW1640 drive at least.

No problems with this media.

Good quality with Mitsubishi/Verbatim media, highly recommended.

No problems with Ritek media either.

First 56x certified media we've ever seen, and the BenQ DW1640 works surprisingly well with this rather unknown media.

Simply blows away the competition, this scan is one of the better we have ever had!

Another good result with these rather rare CD-R discs.

Not the highest quality media, but the result is still good. BenQ may consider looking into adding support for this media at 48x speed, but 40x may be a safer choice due to variable quality with CD-R's using the Plasmon ATIP.

No problems with this media.

The quality is good, but we are a bit surprised to find this media only supported at 40x, BenQ should look into this.

CD-ReWritable:

The BenQ DW1640 supports a CD-ReWriting speed of 32x; let us see how this compares to other writers. Let us start with taking a look at the writing strategy it uses:

The BenQ DW1640 uses P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its rated speed of 32x, this gives an average speed of 30.33x. This seems to be about average compared to other drives, but let us include some other results for comparison.

The NEC ND-3540A uses Z-CLV, (Zone-Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its rated speed of 32x, this gives an average speed of 29.75x.

The Plextor PX-712A, with its P-CAV (Partial-Constant Angular Velocity) write speed of 24X for Ultra Speed CD-RW discs is among the faster writers due to its high starting speed of 21.12x.

Below are a comparison table with results from other writers.

It holds the speed record along with the Samsung drive, so we are satisfied with this result. But let us take a look at the quality with three discs.

Not exactly excellent you may say, clearly room for improvements.

Well, the result is even worse with this media, again; BenQ needs to look at the CD-RW writing quality.

Better, but still far from good.

Summary:
It's an outstanding CD-Writer, the quality is excellent and most drives can't keep up with it in terms of quality. BenQ should consider improving CD-R media further as two discs were only supported at 40x. But for CD-RW writing the story is different, it's fast enough, but the writing quality is very poor and BenQ should improve the CD-RW writing quality - even their own CD-RW media gives very high error levels.

But after all, it's a DVD-Writer, so head on to next page and read about DVD-Writing performance and DVD media compatibility…