detail information

Positive:

• Supports 4x DVD+R9 Double Layer writing
• Supports 16x DVD+/-R speed (at least on the paper…)
• Supports 4x DVD+/-RW speed.
• Good writing quality with most DVDR/RW discs
• Supports DAO-RAW writing.
• Supports reading and writing of full SubChannel Data.
• Good reading speed with most types of media, including DVD-Video discs.
• Fast and perfect audio extraction.
• Supports bitsetting for DVD+R9 DL media.
• Nice design
• Relatively quiet operation
• Tool for adjusting performance/Noise ratio.
• 'Two sheep" writer - positive when backing up copy protected games.

Negative:

• Poor bundle (missing cables and empty discs).
• Would not write at 16x to DVD media that according to pioneer should work at 16x.
• VERY poor media compatibility!
• Less than perfect CD-Writing quality
• Questionable CD-RW writing quality.
• Z-CLV writing speed makes it slower than other drives (Example: Drive is slower at 16x DVD-writing than most other drives is at 12x DVD-Writing!)
• High seek times
• Does notsupport Mt. Rainier.
• Read CD-RW discs at 32x only.
• Problems reading/writing 99minutes CD-R discs
• Problems reading certain copy protected audio discs.
• Does not support bitsetting for DVD+R/RW media.
• No digital audio connector

Conclusion:

Well, this drive does have some good points - but we are not quite satisfied with it so read on to find out why.

 The main positive points: The most positive things with this drive is for sure the good writing quality with most DVD+R and DVD-R media types. 4x DVD+R9 DL writing speed is a welcomed improvement too. Beside this it's a quiet and nice looking drive. It's quite good as a reader too, including with Audio discs.

The main negative points: The main negative point in our opinion is the media compatibility, give us a break Pioneer! Some well known 8x media types that have been available for about a year still only works at 4x, and 16x media that has been available since long time before this drive became available is still not supported at 16x? Very disappointing! Beside this we were unable to write at 16x with the '16x qualified" media we tried. 16x? Yeah - but only on the paper. And the drive is slow at 16x due to the Z-CLV writing technology, most other drives are faster than the Pioneer DVR-A08XLA when writing at 12x! And it's far from the best CD-Writer we have had, there are some other negative points too as you may see above but these are not as important as these we have mentioned here.

To sum it all up, this is the best we could say: 'Excellent DVD-Writing quality, but poor media compatibility, low writing speed as well as many other small drawbacks puts this drive behind several other drives.". If Pioneer had fixed the media compatibility issues as well as some other writing issues (writing speed and CD-R writing quality) we would have brought out an award for it - but nope no award for you this time either Pioneer.

You may discuss/comment this review below or in this forum thread. This forum thread may also be used to ask questions around this drive or request additional tests.

Thanks to:

Conrexx for providing the  media used in this review. Conrexx technology is the supplier of Traxdata media as well as other Ritek media brands for whole Europe.

 For providing the That's Write media used in this review. That's Write focus on providing quality media at reduced prices in Europe.

 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.

 For providing us with Mirror and Miflop Extreme media. Miflop media aims at providing both cheap (INFOSMART) and expensive (Taiyo Yuden) quality media.

 For providing the RiData media used in this review. RiData is a Ritek brand and thus you are sure to get Ritek manufactured discs when buying RiData media.

 For providing the Daxon and BenQ media used in this review. Daxon manufacture high quality media for many large OEM customers lke BenQ and Sony.

 For providing the Verbatim DVD+R9 Double Layer media used in this review. Verbatim provides high quality media almost over the whole world.

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