Positive:

• Excellent/very good CD-R/RW writing quality.
• Excellent/very good DVD±R/RW writing quality and performance.
• Excellent DVD±R writing quality.
• Can burn selected DVD±R media faster than its rated speed.
• Very good reading performance and reliability.
• Reads pressed DVD Video SL/DL and recordable media at 16x/12x.
• DVD-RAM read and write at 12x
• Supports automatic BitSetting (BookType DVD-ROM) on DVD+DL.
• Very good Audio CD ripping performance and quality
• No CSS riplock.
• Can overburn CD-R media.
• Can read and write mini DVD media.

Negative:

• No BitSetting (BookType DVD-ROM) for DVD+R/RW media.
• Can’t read or write to 100 minute CD-R media.

Conclusion:

Let us summarize the most important positive and negative points below:

The main positive points:

The Optiarc AD-7200A is a blisteringly fast drive as far as writing DVD R media is concerned, recording the fastest ever DVD+R burn in our reviews. Not only were the 20x DVD R burns fast, 18x and 16x burns were also extremely fast.

The Optiarc AD-7200A wrote our tested DVD±R/RW/DL media with excellent/very good quality and is a huge step forward from the Optiarc 717x series drives.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was able to burn all our tested CD-R media with excellent/very good quality and media compatibility was excellent.

The Optiarc AD-7200A was also able to burn selected DVD±R/DL media at faster than its rated speed.

Audio CD ripping performance and quality was very good indeed.

The Optiarc AD-7200A is a reasonably well built drive. Noise levels, even at 20x are not intrusive.

The main negative points:

There are not that many negative things to say about the Optiarc AD-7200A.

DVD+R/RW BitSetting would be nice and would enhance compatibility with some older standalone DVD players. This is not a big problem, as there are many firmwares available from the CD Freaks community that support this feature.

We would also like to see support for 100 minute CD-R media.

To sum up, this is what we would say:

“The Optiarc AD-7200A is blisteringly fast when writing DVD±R media and writing quality across all media groups is generally excellent. It’s a must have drive”

We were very impressed by the Optiarc AD-7200A writing quality and performance. We decided to award the drive our “CD Freaks Editor’s Choice Award”.

We found the best price available in the UK at the time of writing the review, to be at E-Buyer. £15.71 Inc VAT.

You may comment on this review below or in this forum thread.

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Introduction