detail information

The specifications of the NEC ND-2500A state that the drive is able to write CD-R discs at 32x. Let us find out how the drive really performs in speed and quality.

Writing Data CD-R discs:

For our data writing tests we simply set up a new compilation of 700Mb using Nero Burning ROM software. Writing method used is DAO (Disc At Once), and the disc is set up as a non-multisession disc with finalize disc enabled. The screenshot below shows how long time it takes to write a disc at the highest speed that is 32x:

The drive used 3 minutes and 43 seconds to write the disc at 32x. Let us see how this compares to some other drives; the Lite-On LDW-411S used 3 minutes and 7 seconds for the same writing operation and the Plextor PX-708A used 2 minutes and 58 seconds. This makes the NEC ND2500A a bit slower than the other drives since the other two drives supports 40x write speed. But speed is not everything, quality is even more important, so let us take a look at the writing quality of this drive.

Write Quality:

We will test CD-R discs from a total of 11 different large and not so large CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed we used the create data CD function in Nero CD-Speed, the discs was written at the maximum speed that the drive supports. For the quality test we used K-Probe that is a tool developed by a Lite-On Employee, it runs under windows and works with drives made by Lite-On. Also note that different drives and different reading speeds may affect the results obtained when scanning the discs. We used a Lite-On LTR-52246S drive and scanned the discs at 48X speed.

A written CD-R disc will always have some C1 errors; C1 errors are easily corrected by the drives error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most drives error correction capabilities, they are not wanted on a good quality disc; a good disc should not contain any C2 errors and preferably have an average C1 error amount of below 2.0 average for the best discs or at least below 10.0 average for good quality discs. After C2 errors there are only un-correctable errors that will make a disc unusable.

Why wait any longer? Below are the obtained results:

CMC Magnetics is not known for making the best CD-R discs but the NEC ND-2500A is still able to produce an acceptable result.

These discs works excellent with the NEC ND-2500A, highly recommended.

Highly recommended discs! You can't get much closer to perfect than this!

Again some excellent discs to use together with the NEC ND-2500A.

Again we could see the superiority of the Taiyo Yuden manufactured CD-R discs! These discs are simply our number 1 choice for every CD-Writer we have used as they works perfect with every writer.

While some other writers have problems with these CD-R discs the NEC ND-2500A did not have any problems and wrote the disc perfect. Highly recommended.

We have found these Samsung CD-R discs manufactured by Plasmon to be of very low quality, but the NEC ND-2500A did not have any problems with them at all. Good job on the CD-R writing quality NEC!

Again another good result from the NEC ND-2500A.

Princo is not known for making the best quality discs, and it seems like NEC also thinks so since they have limited the writing speed to 24x. But the result is still very good.

Even if the result with these discs is not bad we still got a bit disappointed as many other writers is able to write these discs just as good as Taiyo Yuden discs.

While TDK is a well-known brand in larger parts of the world their own manufactured CD-R discs may not be so well known, as they are mostly only available in Europe. But the NEC ND-2500A drive was still able to make an acceptable result, although not perfect.

Summary:
Overall the results are excellent and very few discs came out less than perfect (Perfect = Below 2.0 C1 errors average and no C2 errors). The drive is nearly as good as the Lite-On LDW-411S that currently holds the record for CD-R writing quality. This means that the NEC ND-2500A gets a big plus in our book for CD-R writing quality, on the other side it do get a small minus in our book since it only supports 32x writing speed.

But after all it's a DVD-Writer so head on to next page and read about DVD-Writing performance and DVD media compatibility…