detail information

Positive:

• Excellent writing quality on most media
• Very fast at writing DVD+R and CD-R
• Good DVD±R/RW media compatibility
• Supports DVD±R/+R DL/-R DL writing at 16x/6x/4x
• Supports CD-RW writing at 32x
• Can write DVD+R DL certified media at higher speed
• Supports bitsetting for DVD+R/+R DL (sets auto. booktype to DVD-ROM)
• Can read Pressed DVD-ROM/DVD-Video SL at 16x
• 'Two sheep" writer
• Can overburn CD-Rs up to 96 minutes
• Supports DAO-RAW writing
• Supports Mini DVD-R/RW discs
• Good software suite
• Lead free product

Negative:

• Does not support Mt. Rainier
• Does not increase the burn speed (over-speed) of DVD±R media
• 48x media compatibility on CD-R could be improved
• Reads SL and DL DVD±R discs at only 12x/8x
• CD-R/RW/CD-DA/VCD read speed locked to 40x/40x/40x/16x
• Some sync issues with CD Audio extraction

Conclusion:

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

The main positive points: The Samsung SH-W162C can write DVD±R media with excellent quality. The write performance on DVD+R makes the SH-W162C one of the fastest DVD burners currently available, with 16x burns consistently around the 5 minutes 30 seconds mark, and an impressive 6 minutes 9 seconds at 12x write speed.

CD-R write quality is also excellent with the Samsung SH-W162C, with most tested CD-R media returning impressive results. Write performance was also impressive with many burns well under 3 minutes.

Good DVD media compatibility is also very important, the Samsung SH-W162C was also impressive in this department, with all but one of our test media been written at its rated speed, and in most cases with excellent write quality.

The supplied software package was also good, and should provide the beginner and the more advanced user with all the necessary tools to author and write DVD and CD recordable media.

As a last point we would like to mention that this DVD burner is a 'lead-free" product, which will meet the recycling standards that will come into effect on the 1^st of January 2006.

The main negative points: Although it was already stated above, that the Samsung SH-W162C can write media with impressive quality, it was a little disappointing not to find some media that could be burned at higher than its rated speed. This applies to both DVD and CD-R media.

The Samsung SH-W162C also had some issues with our DAE tests, where sync was lost during 16x 'copy on the fly" tests.

Although the Samsung SH-W162C is a good reader, read performance on DVD±R at only 12x read speed is a bit slow by today's standards. The same applies to CD-R, which is restricted to 40x read speed.

To sum it all up, this is what we would say: 'The Samsung SH-W162C is an inexpensive and very good performing drive". With this in mind, we had no hesitation in awarding the Samsung SH-W162C our CD Freaks 'Safe Buy" award.

By using our price grabber feature cdfreaks.pricegrabber we found no offers, but at getprice the drive is listed at 43.96 EUR (October 2005). 

You may comment on this review below or in this forum thread. 

Thanks to:

Bell Technology spol s.r.o. - Czech Republic for providing the media used in this review.

SVP Communication - The United Kingdom for providing the media used in this review.

Conrexx Technology B.V./RITEK Europe - The Netherlands for providing the media used in this review.

Medea International - United Kingdom for providing the media used in this review

Ricoh Europe - For providing the media used in this review.

E-Net Distribution - United Kingdom for providing the media used in this review.