detail information

The specifications of the Philips DVDRW885 state that the drive is able to write CD-R discs at 24x. 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 it takes to write a disc at the highest speed. (24x):

The drive used 4 minutes and 1 second to write the disc at 24x. Let us see how this compares to other drives; the NU DDW-082 used 3 minutes and 2 seconds for the same writing operation at 40x speed, and the Plextor PX-708A used 2 minutes and 58 seconds at 40x. the low writing speed of only 24x makes this drive noticeably slower than most other drives.

Write Quality:

We will test CD-R discs from a total of 11 different CD-R manufacturers. To really measure the write speed, we used the 'create data CD" function in Nero CD-Speed. The discs were written at the maximum speed that the drive supports. For the quality test, we used K-Probe 2 which 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 with firmware 6S0F 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 drive's error correction capabilities. The next level of errors is C2, while C2 errors could also be corrected by most drive's 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 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 Philips DVDRW885 did okay with this media and should not cause you any problems.

Very good, should not cause you any trouble.

As we could see it starts out with incorrect writing strategy but quickly adjusts it. But there is room for improvements as most other drives works pretty good with this media type.

Very good and you should not have any problems with this media type either.

Perfect, just like it should be with Taiyo Yuden CD-R media.

While some other writers have problems with these CD-R discs, the Philips DVDRW885 did not have any problems at all.

We have found these Samsung CD-R discs, manufactured by Plasmon, to be of very low quality. And as we could see their C1 error count is a bit higher than for most other discs, but far from worryingly high, and there were no C2 errors. So all in all there should not be any problems in practical use.

Again a perfect result, highly recommended.

Princo is not known for making the best quality discs, and as we could see there are problems in the beginning as the Philips DVDRW885 starts out with wrong writing strategy. The Philips DVDRW is able to adjust the writing strategy while writing, but we would still like to see a correctly tuned writing strategy from the start of the disc.

Perfect - just like it should be with these high quality Fujifilm CD-R discs manufactured in Germany. This media is just as good as or better than Taiyo Yuden in our opinion.

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. As we could see the C1 amount is a bit higher than for most other discs.

Summary:
Overall it does the job, but nothing more. It's not the best writer we have had, especially considering the low writing speed of only 24x.

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