Positive:

• Excellent/very good CD-R/RW writing quality.
• Excellent/very good DVD±R/RW writing quality.
• Excellent/Very good DVD±R DL writing quality and performance.
• Can burn selected DVD±R media faster than its rated speed.
• Generally good reading performance and reliability.
• Reads pressed DVD Video SL/DL and recordable media at 16x/12x.
• Supports automatic BitSetting (BookType DVD-ROM) on DVD+DL.
• 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.
• 40x maximum read and write speeds on CD-R media.

Conclusion:

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

The main positive points:

The Pioneer DVR-115DBK is a fast drive as far as writing DVD media is concerned.

The Pioneer DVR-115D wrote our tested DVD±R/RW/DL media with excellent/very good quality and upholds Pioneer’s tradition in this field.

The Pioneer DVR-115DBK was able to burn all our tested CD-R media with excellent/very good quality and media compatibility was also very good.

The Pioneer DVR-115DBK was also able to burn selected DVD±R/DL media at faster than its rated speed.

The Pioneer DVR-115DBK is a well built drive with a solid feel to it. Noise levels, even at 20x are not intrusive.

The main negative points:

There are not that many negative things to say about the Pioneer DVR-115DBK.

DVD+R/RW BitSetting would be nice and would enhance compatibility with some older standalone DVD players.

We would also like to see 48x reading and writing speeds being available for CD-R media.

DVD-RAM writing would also be nice.

To sum up, this is what we would say:

“The Pioneer DVR-115DBK is generally an excellent performer and does exactly what Pioneer claims. It’s another nice drive from Pioneer”

We were very impressed by the Pioneer DVR-115D writing quality and performance. We decided to award the drive our “CD Freaks Safe Buy Award”.

We found the best price available in the UK at the time of writing the review, to be at SVP UK. £17.39 Inc VAT.

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Introduction