detail information

Positive:

• Lightweight, compact and stylish
• Nice retail bundle
• Supports DVD+R at 8x
• Extracts CD-DA at full speed with EAC
• Good overall media support
• Good writing quality on tested DVD+R/RW
• Supports DAO-RAW writing
• A '2 sheep" CD writer

Negative:

• Slow 8x write times (exceeding 14m in most cases)
• Only 4x DVD-R write speed
• CD-R/RW write quality is suspect
• No bit-setting support
• No disc scanning support

Conclusion:

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

The main positive points: The drive is lightweight and compact for easy mobility. It is bundled with a nice complement of software. Very capable at DAE. Can turn in some good write quality on good DVD+R media. Impressive as a 2 sheep writer.

The main negative points: 8x DVD-R writing speeds would have been nice as 8x media is readily available. The write times for 8x are unbearably slow. CD-R/RW write quality needs improvements. Bitsetting for DVD+R media should be standard.

To sum it all up, this is what we would say: 'Overall, this drive with the tested firmware is a capable DVD writer. We would like to see firmware updates to further improve writing quality and to speed up the 8x write time. Limitation of DVD-R to 4x writing speeds detracts from the appeal of this drive. If you are looking for a  lightweight and compact portable burner we could recommend this given you do some careful selection of your media'.

By using our price grabber feature cdfreaks.pricegrabber we found the drive listed at $113.00 (August 28, 2005).

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

Thanks to:

For providing some of the Verbatim media used in this review. Verbatim provides high quality media all over the world and strives to be the standard for DVD hardware reviewing.

Advanced Media/Ritek-USA for providing some of the RiData media used in this review. RiData is an official Ritek brand and thus you are guaranteed to get quality Ritek manufactured discs when buying RiData media.

For providing some of the Memorex media used in this review. Memorex is one of the largest providers of all types of media for larger parts of the world.