detail information

Positive:

• Good retail package that includes both media and software.
• Supports 8x DVD+R and DVD-R speed.
• Supports 4x DVD+RW and DVD-RW.
• Supports 24x CD-RW speed.
• Supports 40x CD-R Speed
• Good CD-R writing quality with most media.
• Good writing quality at 8x with DVD+R media (8x DVD-R not tested due to lack of 8x DVD-R media)
• Good reading performance with almost all types of CD/DVD media.
• Very good seek times.
• Supports DAO-RAW writing.
• Supports reading and writing of full SubChannel Data.
• Supports reading and writing 8cm CD-R discs and credit card CD-R discs.
• Fast and perfect audio extraction.
• Excellent performance with protected audio discs.
• Supports 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns" making it able to backup newer Safedisc protected discs.
• Supports reading and writing 99 minutes CD-R discs.
• Supports bitsetting for DVD+R/RW media (Requires a new firmware version US0J that is not yet officially released by Lite-On, will be released officially soon).
• No speed lock for reading DVD-Video discs.

Negative:

• Not the best DVD-R Writing quality with various cheap media types.
• CD-R writing quality could be improved with some CD-R disc types, for example Taiyo Yuden.
• For 8x DVD-R writing it's among the slower writers.
• Few 4x DVDR discs supported at 8x writing speed.
• Low writing quality with most types of rewritable media (CD-RW, DVD-RW and DVD+RW)
• Does not support Mt. Rainier.
• Reads CD-RW discs at only 32x.

Conclusion:

Lite-On has again been able to put together a good performer. When using quality media you will most likely not have any problems with this drive. But let us take a closer look at what we think is the main Positive and Negative points with this drive.

The main positive points: First of all it's one of the few DVD-Writers to support 'correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns", this makes it a number one choice for backing up protected games. While we are at it we could also mention that it has no problems with protected audio discs either. And the reading performance with most disc types is very good, this includes DVD-Video discs which most other drives reads at low speeds. The writing quality at 8x DVD+R speed is very good, and the writing quality with most quality 4x discs is good too. CD-Writing is both fast (40x) and good with almost all disc types. On top of this it supports bitsetting for DVD+R/RW discs. And we must not forget the great Lite-On community and the amount of tools specifically designed to work with Lite-On drives. Check out our Lite-On forum for further details.

The main negative points: Most people will probably be a bit disappointed by the writing quality on some cheap DVDR discs, and it can't keep up with the quality offered by drives from NEC and Pioneer. And as a surprise to us it does also have some problems with most ReWritable disc types and the writing quality is not as good as it should have been.

The drive is priced at $ 97 USD (Price from Pricewatch per 25.04.2004 ) which makes it quite competitive to similarly featured drives.

To sum it all up, this is the best we could say: 'A good all-round drive, but writing quality needs some polishing". As it does not offer much new and can't really compete with the latest drives from some other manufacturers in some important areas like writing quality, we do not feel that it deserves any awards.

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