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The Lite-On SOHW-812S supports writing Ultra-Speed CD-RW discs at 24x speed. It supports writing DVD+RW discs at 4x and DVD-RW discs at 4x speed. Unfortunately we did not have any 4x DVD-RW discs available for this review.

Re-Writing data:

For this test we set up a new compilation containing 650Mb of data in Nero Burning ROM. We used the DAO (Disc At Once) writing method. In the screenshot below you can see that the burn process completed successfully.

The Lite-On SOHW-812S used 3 minutes and 58 seconds for writing the disc at 24X, let us compare this to some other writers; The Plextor PX-708A used 3 minutes and 39 seconds to write the disc and the NU DDW-082 used 3 minutes and 37 seconds to write the disc. This makes the Lite-On SOHW-812S the slowest drive out of these.

And here is the writing time for writing 4.4Gb of data to a 2X Memorex DVD-RW disc:

The drive used 29 minutes and 51 seconds to write the disc at 2X. Compared to the NEC ND-2500A (used 28 minutes and 31 seconds to write the disc) and the NU DDW-082 (used 28 minutes and 46 seconds to write the disc). This makes it the slowest drive again.

And finally here is the writing time for writing 4.4Gb of data to a Ricoh 4X DVD+RW disc:

The Lite-On SOHW-812S used 14 minutes and 9 seconds to write the disc, as a comparison the NU DDW-082 used 14 minutes and 34 seconds and the NEC ND-2500A used 13 minutes and 52 seconds. This put the Lite-On SOHW-812S between the two other drives.

CD-RW Packet writing:

Now it's time to take a look at the packet writing performance of the Lite-On SOHW-812S. We used Ahead InCD to write 401 MB (421 003 264 bytes) data to the disc.

The drive did well enough and the average speed is right where we expected.

DVD-RW/DVD+RW packet writing tests:

We used Ahead InCD to format and write 2Gb (2 217 820 160 bytes) data to the disc.

It was slightly slower than expected for DVD+RW packet writing, but not much and hardly noticeable in real use. The reason for the increased formatting time is probably due to a change in InCD.

Writing Quality with Re-Writable discs:

Due to request from our readers we will add a few write quality tests with Re-Writable media. Settings and testing procedures is the same as used earlier in this review so you may want to go back and read them if unsure. All discs used for these tests have been written to before, but none have been written to more than 25 times.

CD-ReWritable media:

Compared to the results we have had with earlier Lite-On drives this result is pretty bad. Room for improvement! On the other side; there were no C2 errors, which is good.

Low quality discs, but the result is still just as good as the Mitsubishi disc. More room for improvement.

DVD+ReWritable media:

We did try with another brand new disc and after rewriting it twice we got the same result. The reading curve shows that the results are not as good as it should have been.

The best result we got with this drive. Highly recommended media.

Still not perfect reading curve, but acceptable.

Not as good as expected, there are some reading problems.

DVD-ReWritable media:

AS we could see the result is not good at all and the disc is completely unreadable. We did try a new disc and after a few rewrites the result were this bad again. Room for improvement Lite-On!

A slowdown at the end, but nothing to complain about. Highly recommended.

The drive wrote the disc but no drives were able to recognize the disc afterwards.

To sum it up: Overall we are not too happy with the Rewriting quality of the Lite-On SOHW-812S and it gets a minus in our book for that. Speed wise it's a bit slower than most other drives, but nothing worth complaining about.

Before we round off this review, let us run the drive through some advanced tests at next page…