detail information

Reading performance:

For these tests we will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD's, including audio discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction, this drive supports:

• DVD-ROM : 16x
• CD-ROM : 48x 

Pressed discs:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing the Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD that is close to 75 minutes in length. Below you will see the produced result:

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S reached 48.28x, and will reach faster speeds on a full disc. Let's compare the result in the table below:

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S was very fast reading a pressed CD-ROM. The seek times were average.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD. The disc we used was a Ricoh 52X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Moser Baer India. 

As we can see from the above screenshot, the Lite-On SHW-16H5S reached 48.62x when reading CD-R. This gives an average read speed of 36.84x.

Now let us compare with the drives below.

Once again the Lite-On SHW-16H5S performed extremely well on our CD-R read test, and was among the fastest drives

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

 CD-Rewritable discs:

Again, we made a copy of the original Roxio Media Creator 7.5 install CD; this time we used a Verbatim Ultra Speed (32X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

As we can see above, the Lite-On SHW-16H5S is locked at around 32x, reading CD-RW; now let us compare it to other drives below.

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S performed below average at reading CD-RW's.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Lite-On SHW-16H5S, again we used Nero CD/DVD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is slightly larger than the disc used for the other tests, to be exact it's nearly 79 minutes in length (78:53:31).

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S went beyond its maximum rated speed of 48x and actually reached 49.71x; let us compare the result with other drives:

The Lite-ON SHW-16H5S performed well above average with the Audio-CD.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

For this test we used EAC (Exact Audio Copy) to test the drives Audio extraction performance. As we can see from the screenshot below the drive supports 'caching" which can have an adverse effect on Audio extraction performance. 

Below is the results produced by EAC:

 Burst mode

 Secure mode

The drive performed very well in burst mode, and still managed a reasonable result in secure mode.

Advanced audio - DAE quality test:

Before we move on to testing DVD read speeds, we will take a last audio test, and this time we used the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed. For this test we used a CD-R media from RICOH (Thanks to RICOH Europe (BV) for sending us this media).

The extracting quality is excellent, and the drive performed flawlessly with this test, an excellent result.

DVD reading performance:

Again, we will use Nero CD-Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of DVD discs. The drive should read pressed single layer DVD-discs at 16X.

DVD - DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start with a single and Double Layered DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required to watch DVD movies, it's useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds if you're going to extract (rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

DVD-Video Single Layer

 
DVD-Video Double Layer

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S is not RIPLOCKED and reads a pressed DVD-Video at up to 16x for a Single Layer disc, and at 8x for a Double Layer disc.

Now let us test a pressed DVD-ROM disc. For this test we used the 'Plextor PX-716A" install DVD, which is around 4.37 Gigabyte in size.

As we can see from the above screenshot, the Lite-On SHW-16H5S reads a DVD-ROM at 16x.

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S performed very well with our SL DVD-Video test. It was the fastest drive at reading a pressed SL DVD-Video disc. With the Double Layer DVD-Video it performed around average.

DVD - DVD+R(W):

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD+R and a Verbatim 8X DVD+RW with about 4.4Gb of data. Below are the results:

DVD+R

 
DVD+RW

Once again the Lite-On SHW-16H5S was the fastest drive when reading DVD+R, and above average with DVD+RW. Now let us see how it will perform on DVD-R/RW.

DVD - DVD-R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW disc filled with about 4.4Gb of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-R

 
DVD-RW

Strangely the Lite-On SHW-16H5S only reads DVD-R at 12x and not 16x as it does with DVD+R media. DVD-RW media is also read at 12x.

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S performed averagely when reading DVD-R media, but was among the fastest drives when reading DVD-RW media.

Overall thoughts:

The Lite-On SHW-16H5S is an excellent reader; it's fast and reliable, worth a mention is the DAE performance, which is excellent.

But now it's time to head on to a more interesting part: Writing CD-R and CD-RW discs…