Positive:

• Supports BD-R/RE read/write at 4x/2x
• Supports BD-ROM SL/DL reading at 4.8x/4x.
• Supports DVD-ROM SL/DL reading at 16x/8x
• Supports DVD+R/-R writing at 12x
• Supports DVD+R/-R DL writing at 4x
• Supports DVD-RAM read and write at 5x
• Very good to excellent write quality on DVD and CD media
• Supports bitsetting for DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL (booktype DVD-ROM)
• Supports overspeeding on DVD+R and DVD+R DL media
• Supports overburning CD-R media
• Very good retail package and includes Cyberlink Blu-ray disc software suite
• A “Two Sheep” writer

Negative:

• Writes CD-R/RW at a slow 8x/10x speed
• Does not support read/write 50GB BD-R DL media

Conclusion:

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

The main positive points: The LG GBW-H10N is called “Super Multi Blue” since it supports recording on all available media formats including CD-R/RW, DVD±R/±RW, DVD±R Double/Dual Layer and DVD-RAM as well as Blu-ray media.  The retail package comes with Cyberlink software suite containing everything you need from watching DVD/Blu-ray movies to high-definition authoring and backing up discs.

The LG GBW-H10N is currently the first Blu-ray drive that supports 4x read and write speed on BD-R media. It is able to read and write a full 25GB data in about 22 minutes. However, from our test we found only two BD-R media that are supported at 4x, i.e. Verbatim BD-R and TDK BD-R media.

The fast 12x DVD+R and DVD-R writing on our test media produced very good to excellent results especially on our high quality media. At 12x write speed, a full DVD+R/-R can be burn at an amazing 5:55 minutes. During our tests, the drive proved that it supports reading DVD-ROM Single Layer at a fast 16x speed.

Write quality on CD-R media also produced exellent result although they were written at a slow 8x speed which is the maximum write speed according to the specifications. The drive also able to overburn CD-R media around 95 minutes. For DVD-RAM, the drive supports read and write at 5x which is a very nice feature.

In our DAE quality test it shows that the extracting quality is excellent. The Advanced Tests specify that the drive can be categorized as a “Two Sheep” writer, which implies that it should be sufficient for backing up copy protected CD discs.

The main negative points: There are a couple concerns that we would like to mention as our feedback. As previously noted, the drive writes CD-R media at a maximum speed of 8x, which we think is quite slow for today’s needs. However, the results produced at this speed are excellent thus there is still room for higher CD-R write speed while maintaining the burn quality.

Another point is the drive lacks of 50GB BD-R DL reading and writing support. Even though this type of media is not widely available yet, but it would be a nice option to have in the future.

Final Thoughts: To sum it all up, this is what we would say: “The LG GBW-H10N Super Multi Blue is a superb all-round drive and an exceptional choice for CD, DVD and Blu-ray writer. If you are in the market for high capacity data storage as well as high definition audio-video recording and disc authoring, we recommend this drive.” We therefore award the drive with CDFreaks’ Safe Buy award.

By using our CD Freaks price grabber feature we did not find any offer, but the drive is listed at $799 (December 2006).

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

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Introduction