detail information

Reading performance:

For these tests we will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD's, including audio discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction, this drive supports:

• DVD-ROM : 16x
• CD-ROM : 48x 

Pressed discs:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing Creative Blaster Audigy install CD that is close to 74 minutes long. Below you will see the produced result:

The Philips DVDR1648 reached 47.12x. Let's compare the result in the table below:

The Philips DVDR1648 performed above average reading pressed CD-ROM.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original Creative Blaster Audigy install CD. The disc we used was a Verbatim 48X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation. 

Again the Philips DVDR1648 performed above average on CD-R read test.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

 CD-Rewritable discs:

Again, we made a copy of the original Creative Blaster Audigy install CD; this time we used a Verbatim Ultra Speed (32X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

As we can see above, the Philips DVDR1648 is locked at 40x, reading CD-RW; now let us compare it to other drives below.

Again the Philips DVDR1648 performed above average on CD-RW read test.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:

We used Nero CD/DVD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is slightly larger than the disc used for the other tests, to be exact it's about 78 minutes long (77:43:45).

The Philips DVDR1648 reached over 49x while reading this CD-DA disc. Let us compare the result with other drives:

The Philips DVDR1648 performed among the fastest drives on the Audio-CD.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

 Burst mode

 Secure mode

The drive performed excellent in burst mode and rather slow in secure mode.

Advanced audio - DAE quality test:

Before we move on to testing DVD read speeds, we will take a last audio test, and this time we used the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed. For this test we used a CD-R DA media from MMORE (Thanks to MMORE (NL) for sending us this media).

The extracting quality is excellent and it should support everything, except reading the Leadout.

DVD reading performance:

Again, we will use Nero CD-Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of DVD discs. The drive should read pressed single layer DVD-discs at 16X.

DVD - DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start with a single and Double Layered DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required to watch DVD movies, it's useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds if you're going to extract (rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

DVD-Video Single Layer

 
DVD-Video Double Layer

As we can see the drive reached 16x on DVD-Video Single Layer and 12x on DVD-Video Double layer.

The Philips DVDR1648 performed excellent on the DVD-Video SL/DL tests.

DVD - DVD+R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD+R and a Verbatim 8X DVD+RW with about 4.4Gb of data. Below are the results:

DVD+R

 
DVD+RW

The Philips DVDR1648 performed above average on DVD+R and DVD+RW. Now let us see how it will perform on DVD-R/RW.

DVD - DVD-R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW disc filled with about 4.4Gb of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-R

 
DVD-RW

There are hardly any differences in the speed, compared to reading the DVD+R/RW discs.

Once again the Philips DVDR1648 performance was above average while reading DVD-R/RW.

Overall thoughts:

The Philips DVDR1648 is a good reader, it's not the fastest reader in the world, but during our read tests it proved reliable.

But now it's time to head on to a more interesting part: Writing CD-R and CD-RW discs…