detail information

Positive:

• Very good retail package that includes both media and software.
• Supports 8x DVD+R speed.
• Supports 4x DVD+RW.
• Supports 24x CD-RW speed.
• Supports 40x CD-R Speed
• Impressive CD-R writing quality with supported media.
• Very fast writing strategy makes it one of the faster 8x DVD-Writers.
• Impressive DVD+R/RW writing quality with most types DVD+R/RW media.
• Many types of 4x DVD+R media are supported at 8x speed.
• Good DVD-R/RW writing quality on most supported media.
• Running OPC technology that works.
• Impressive reading performance with almost all types of CD/DVD media.
• Very good seek times.
• Recognizes all types of media very quick after inserted.
• God packet writing performance.
• Supports DAO-RAW writing.
• Supports reading and writing of full SubChannel Data.
• Supports reading and writing 8cm CD-R discs.
• Fast and perfect audio extracting.
• Excellent performance with protected audio discs.
• Supports reading and writing 99 minutes discs.
• Very good build quality.
• Fully supports bitsetting (supports bitsetting for all types of DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW media!).

Negative:

• Low writing quality with unsupported DVD-R media.
• Writes DVD-R discs that are incompatible with some players.
• CD-R media compatibility could be improved.
• Do not support reporting C2 errors.
• Does not support Mt. Rainier (firmware upgrade with Mt.Rainier support is expected in April).
• Read speed of DVD-Video discs is locked to 6x CAV.
• Does not support 'Correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns" making it unable to backup newer Safedisc protected discs.
•  Unable to read/write credit card CD-R discs.

Conclusion:

We had no prior experience with NU drives, as they are pretty new on the market, so we did not know what to expect from this drive. But to be honest we were pleasantly surprised. We also like the work done by the firmware development team at NU, they have really improved the drive from what it was in the beginning. They still have work to do though, but from what we have seen so far we have no doubt that they will continue to improve the firmware and work out more bugs with every firmware upgrade. Here is a list on things they have improved so far:

⋅         Improved CD-ReWriting speed from 10x to 24x
⋅         Improved CD-RW reading from 26x to 40x
⋅         Improved writing quality on DVD+R/RW and CD-R discs greatly.
⋅         Added 4x DVD-R writing support
⋅         Added 2x DVD-RW writing support

And we have been informed that a firmware, expected to be released in April, will also add Mount Rainier support. This is a feature that was promised as a firmware upgrade back in September 2003 when the drive was released, so it's about time that they finally have it ready. Anyway, let us sum up our experience with this drive:

The main positive points: Since there are so many positive aspects with this drive we will try to mention the most important ones. First it's an excellent reader and beats most other drives in every reading test, regardless of media type. And it's an excellent reader for protected audio discs, along with excellent extracting quality we have a real winner here if you are into backing up audio discs. It will also serve you perfectly as a CD-Writer, as it's very fast and the writing quality is outstanding, as long as you stick to media that is on the supported media list. And for DVD-Writing it's also great, due to a very early shift to 8x ,(when writing at 8x), it's among the faster 8x drives we have reviewed. The writing quality with nearly all DVD+R media is excellent, we believe this is much due to the running OPC technology this drive has. And finally; this drive also supports bitsetting - and not only for DVD+R/RW, it supports bitsetting for DVD-R/RW as well. This is the first drive to support bitsetting for all types of DVD-R/RW and DVD+R/RW media.

The main negative points: While most of the negative points is rather small there is one that you should consider, and that is the DVD-R writing problems. DVD-R discs written by this drive is not readable by some drives, this is probably due to a problem with writing the Lead-in correctly. We hope that NU is able to fix this problem in later firmwares, and remember that the B364 firmware used in this review is still a test firmware and not a firmware that have reached final stage. Another problem to follow is the writing quality on unsupported DVD-R discs, but as already said - we used a test firmware and not a finalized firmware so this will hopefully be fixed in upcoming firmware versions. Other than this, it's worth mentioning that this drive is not the number one choice for backing up games as it does not support correct EFM encoding of regular bit patterns.

The drive is priced at $ 96 USD (Price from Pricewatch per 13.03.2004 ) which makes it quite competitive to similarly featured drives.

To sum it all up, this is the best we could say: 'Fix the DVD-R writing problem - and this drive becomes a real winner". And we feel that it deserves a 'Best value" award, if NU is able to put their heads together and fix the DVD-R problem we will be willing to hand out the 'Editors Choice" award to this drive.

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