detail information

Positive:

• Solid and well stocked retail bundle
• Well rounded software suite from Ulead
• Good CD Audio extraction quality.
• Reads Single Layer DVD Video discs at 16x
• Reads DVD+R and DVD-R at full 16x speed
• Supports reading LeadIn, CD Text and SubChannel data on CD media
• Super Multi drive: reads and writes to most formats including DVD-RAM
• Fast Z-CLV 16x writing to DVD media
• Okay writing quality on CD-R/RW
• Good writing quality on 8x DVD+R media
• 'Two Sheep" burner
• Excellent DVD+R Double Layer capabilities
• Supports reading and writing to 99 min CD-R's

Negative:

• No bitsetting available for DVD+R/RW media
• 4x riplock on Double Layer DVD-Video
• Slow DAE extraction speeds
• Does not support reading LeadOut on CD media
• 24x CD-RW writing not available on Verbatim 32x or Memorex 24x CD-RW
• Very poor DVD writing quality at 16x
• Questionable writing quality on DVD-R media
• 12x writing speed not available
• Slower disc recognition times compared to other drives
• No PI/PIF/PO (Disc Quality) scanning support

Conclusion:

Let us summarize the most important positive and negative points below:

The main positive points: The first thing that you will notice when you open up the Hammer Storage DVD burner is the excellent and well stocked bundle that they have included with this product. The retail package is jam-packed with the Panasonic (MATSHITA) drive, cables, instructions, software, one Verbatim 16x DVD+R disc and one Panasonic 3x DVD-RAM disc. This is indeed a much nicer retail package than the competition provides. The MATSHITA DVD-RAM SW-9585 drive displays good CD-R writing quality on most media, with the exception of Ritek CD-R. The drive showed us some very good write quality with DVD+R media when burning at speeds below 16x. Advanced tests indicate that the Panasonic drive can be classified as a 'Two sheep" writer, which means that it should be good for backing up copy-protected discs. The ability to read DVD±R media at 16x is a very useful and welcomed feature. DVD+R Double Layer writing is well done. The drive can even write to Ritek DVD+R DL at 4x with good quality! Writing to Ritek DVD+R DL media with good quality at 4x is not an easy feat.

The main negative points: The number one problem that we see with the Hammer Storage / Panasonic DVD drive is that the 16x DVD writing is horribly broken. Almost all discs that are burned at 16x result in incredibly high Parity Inner Failure errors reported on Kprobe scans and unuseable discs. We would also really like to see a 12x writing speed option available since the 12x writing quality is much better compared to 16x writing on this drive. The writing quality on DVD-R media needs improvement. The Digital Audio Extraction is slow compared to the competition. Double Layer DVD Video ripping is locked to 4x maximum.

To sum it all up, the best we could say is: 'A fine drive for DVD-RAM, Double Layer burning or CD-R writing, but if you are interested in a drive that burns single layer DVD media at 16x with good quality, then you'll have to look elsewhere."   Even though the drive is using a Z-CLV write strategy, it is surprisingly fast. It just does not create a useable disc at 16x. The writing quality at 12x and lower speeds is very good. The CD writing is good with a few exceptions. Panasonic could have a real winner here if they would commit to improving the firmware. Perhaps this is because of the chipset or perhaps they haven't the desire to improve? We have reported the problems to Hammer Storage / Panasonic and we truly hope that a future firmware can improve the writing quality.

Using our price grabber feature cdfreaks.pricegrabber turned up no results on this drive (Sept 25^th 2005). You can find the drive in stores such as CompUSA or Fry's Electronics, who carry the drive for as little as $44.95 after mail in rebate.

You may discuss/comment this review below or in this forum thread.

Thanks to:

 For providing the Verbatim media used in this review. Verbatim provides high quality media all over the world and strives to be the standard for DVD hardware reviewing.

Advanced Media/Ritek-USA for providing some of the RiDATA media used in this review. RiDATA is an official Ritek brand and thus you are guaranteed to get quality Ritek manufactured discs when buying RiData media.

 For providing the Memorex media used in this review. Memorex is one of the largest providers of all types of media for larger parts of the world.

 For providing the Fujifilm media used in this review. Fujifilm makes high-performance media for video and storage applications.

For providing some of the SONY media used in this review. SONY is a leading manufacturer of audio, video, communications, and information technology products for the consumer and professional markets.

For providing the Optodisc media used in this review. Optodisc Technology Corporation excels at the manufacturing and selling of High-Density Optical Storage Media DVDs.

 For providing the Maxell 5x DVD-RAM media used in this review. Maxell is one of the world's leading producers of optical and magnetic memory media.