detail information

It has been a while since last time we looked into a BenQ drive. The drive they sent us was their latest DVD-Writer; the BenQ DW822A. This drive is the first drive on the market that has hardware capable of writing dual layer DVD+R discs. The firmware is not ready for dual layer yet, but you have the promise to get a firmware upgrade on 30. September 2004 that supports it. Read on to find out how this drive compares to other competing drives on the market.

Also thanks to Memorex for providing some of the media used in this review.

Some BenQ history:

We took a quick look at the company information found at BenQ Europe's web pages:

The BenQ Group, formerly known as Acer Communications & Multimedia Group, is a global operation, employing over 14,760 people worldwide and with an annual turnover (2003) of US$ 3.6 billion. Its expertise encompasses: Communications, Imaging, Display technology, Digital media and Electro-optics products. As home, office, and entertainment merge with each other, BenQ will use these competencies to create networked digital lifestyle devices that will increasingly become part of our world.

BenQ is in a unique position to serve this newly emerging world. It owns more than 1,382 global patents. In addition to this, R&D is carried out in the Hsinchu Lab in, the Suzhou Software Development Center in , and the Wireless Technology Center in San Diego, . BenQ currently employs some 2,000 R&D specialists worldwide. It spends about 4% of its income on R&D.

For production, BenQ has facilities in , , , and . BenQ Suzhou is the flagship facility covering 600,000 sq. meters and employing over 6,000 people. Today that centre boasts an annual output capacity of 4 million colour monitors, 8 million keyboards, and 4 million scanners.

As you could see it's a large company with long history. But it's time to look at the specifications of the drive.

Drive specifications:

These are the specifications of this drive, found at the BenQ's webpage:

World's First DVD+R Double-Layer Upgradeable Re-Writer

The BenQ DVD822A is the world's first 8x DVD+/-RW re-writer with firmware upgrade to DVD+R double-layer recordable drive. It is designed for customers in search of something different among the existing dual DVD+/-RW drives and provides a free firmware upgrade feature to become a double-layer recordable drive. The firmware features 2.4x DVD+R double-layer recording speed and will be available from the beginning of Q4-2004, when double-layer media becomes more accessible on the market.

The most important features of this drive are of course the possibility to upgrade it to a Dual Layer capable writer with a firmware upgrade. Other benefits are the large 8Mb buffer, which is rare to see in most modern DVD-Writers. On the other side it's surprising to see a new DVD-Writer nowadays to only support 10x CD-RW and 24x CD-R writing speeds, this of course places it a long step behind many other new writers in this area.

But it may have other strengths that could not be read out from the specifications, so continue to read to see what our test tells.

Test machine:

For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

⋅         Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-8KNXP with Intel i875P chipset.
⋅         Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2,8GHz 800MHz FSB with Hyper Threading support.
⋅         RAM: 1Gb PC3500 DDR
⋅         GFX: ATI Radeon 9800 pro
⋅         Sound: SB Audigy 2
⋅         Hard disks: 2 x Hitachi Deskstar 7k250 160Gb S-ATA in RAID 0 on the i875P S-ATA RAID controller.

System set-up:

The BenQ DW822A was connected as Primary Slave and identified itself as ATAPI DVD DUAL 8X4X12X. DMA (Direct Memory Access) and autorun was enabled for all devices.

Software:

Windows XP professional is installed on the computer along with Service Pack 1 for windows XP. We will be using the following software in this review:

⋅         Ahead InCD v 4.2.4.1
⋅         Ahead Nero Burning ROM version 6.3.1.6
⋅         Ahead Nero CD/DVD Speed v2.20
⋅         Ahead Nero InfoTool v2.21
⋅         Slysoft CloneCD v4.3.2.2
⋅         Exact Audio Copy v0.95 prebeta 5
⋅         K-Probe v2.1.0

Head on to the next page and find out what's inside the box…

Conclusion

Features and bundle