Positive:

• Generally good DVD-R/±RW writing quality and performance.
• Very fast at writing DVD±R DL media.
• Can burn selected DVD±R media faster than its rated speed.
• Excellent reading performance and reliability.
• Excellent CD-Audio ripping performance and quality.
• Reads pressed DVD Video SL/DL and recordable media at 16x/12x.
• Supports BitSetting (BookType DVD-ROM) on DVD+R/DL.
• Supports Disc Quality Scanning with CD Speed
• Can read and write mini DVD media.

Negative:

• CD-R writing quality could be improved.
• Writing quality on DVD+R could be improved.

Conclusion:

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

The main positive points:

The Samsung SH-S223F is a fast drive as far as writing CD-R and DVD±R media is concerned, recording some of the fastest times on DVD±R discs burned in our reviews.

The Samsung SH-S223F wrote our tested DVD-R/±RW/DL media with generally good quality.

The Samsung SH-S223F was also able to burn selected DVD±R media at faster than its rated speed.

CD-Audio ripping quality and performance was excellent on the Samsung SH-S223F. It’s one of the fastest CD-Audio ripping drives we have ever tested.

The Samsung SH-S223F also has excellent DVD±R DL writing performance and, is one of the fastest drives ever tested.

The Samsung SH-S223F also supports Disc Quality Scanning with CD Speed, once a small edit to the system registry has been performed.

The Samsung SH-S223F is a reasonably well built drive. Noise levels, even at 22x are not intrusive and DVD-Video playback noise levels are low.

The main negative points:

CD-R writing quality on the Samsung SH-S223F needs to improve. Most of our burned test discs had high C1 errors and C2 errors were present on the resulting discs.

DVD+R writing quality also could be improved. The burns themselves are generally fine, but all our DVD+R test burns had re-link spikes. This may not cause a problem to most users, but we would rather these re-link spikes were not there.

To sum up, this is what we would say:

“The Samsung SH-S223F is fast when writing CD-R and DVD±R/DL media and writing quality on DVD-R/±RW/DL was generally good. However, CD-R writing quality was disappointing”

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Introduction