detail information

Reading performance:

For these tests we will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD's, including audio discs and DVD-media. As already mentioned in the introduction, this drive supports:

• DVD-ROM : 16x
• CD-ROM : 48x 

Pressed discs:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing the SoundBlaster Audigy install CD that is close to 74 minutes in length. Below you will see the produced result:

The Samsung SH-W162C reached 47.11x, and will reach faster speeds on a full disc. Let's compare the result in the table below:

The Samsung SH-W162C performed above average reading pressed CD-ROM.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original SoundBlaster Audigy install CD. The disc we used was a Ricoh 52X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Moser Baer India. 

As we can see from the above screenshot, the Samsung SH-W162C is locked at 40x when reading CD-R. This gives an average read speed of 30.66x.

Now let us compare with the drives below.

The Samsung SH-W162C performed around average on our CD-R read test, and seek times were good.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

 CD-Rewritable discs:

Again, we made a copy of the original SoundBlaster Audigy install CD; this time we used a Verbatim Ultra Speed (32X) CD-RW disc made by Mitsubishi Chemicals Corporation.

As we can see above, the Samsung SH-W162C is locked at 40x, reading CD-RW; now let us compare it to other drives below.

The Samsung SH-W162C performed above average at reading CD-RW's, and the seek times are very good.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Samsung SH-W162C, again we used Nero CD/DVD-Speed to measure the transfer rate. The audio disc we used is slightly larger than the disc used for the other tests, to be exact it's was nearly 78 minutes in length (77:43:45).

The Samsung SH-W162C went beyond its maximum rated speed of 40x and actually reached 41.63x; let us compare the result with other drives:

The Samsung SH-W162C performed around average on the Audio-CD.

* Some drives including the NU HDW-164 will simply execute the seek command without actually moving the pickup.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

 Burst mode

 Secure mode

The drive performed extremely well in burst mode, but rather slow in secure mode.

Advanced audio - DAE quality test:

Before we move on to testing DVD read speeds, we will take a last audio test, and this time we used the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed. For this test we used a CD-R media from RICOH (Thanks to RICOH Europe (BV) for sending us this media).

The extracting quality is excellent and the drive performed well with the 'copy on the fly" test, right up to 16x were sync issues were reported. Also reading of lead-in and lead-out were also not supported.

DVD reading performance:

Again, we will use Nero CD-Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of DVD discs. The drive should read pressed single layer DVD-discs at 16X.

DVD - DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start with a single and Double Layered DVD video discs. While only 1X speed is required to watch DVD movies, it's useful to be able to read the discs at higher speeds if you're going to extract (rip) the content of the disc to your hard drive.

DVD-Video Single Layer

 
DVD-Video Double Layer

The Samsung SH-W162C is not RIPLOCKED and reads a pressed DVD-Video at up to 16x for a Single Layer disc, and beyond 8x for a Double Layer disc.

Now let us test a pressed DVD-ROM disc. For this test we used the 'Half-Life 2" install DVD, which is around 4.37 Gigabyte in size.

The Samsung SH-W162C will reach beyond 16x on DVD-ROM's.

The Samsung SH-W162C performed very well with our SL DVD-Video test. It was the fastest drive at reading a pressed SL DVD-Video disc. With the DL DVD-Video it performed above average.

DVD - DVD+R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD+R and a Verbatim 8X DVD+RW with about 4.4Gb of data. Below are the results:

DVD+R

 
DVD+RW

The Samsung SH-W162C performed averagely on DVD+R and DVD+RW, returning respectable results. Now let us see how it will perform on DVD-R/RW.

DVD - DVD-R/RW:

For this test we used a Verbatim 16X DVD-R disc and a Verbatim 6X DVD-RW disc filled with about 4.4Gb of data. Our test results are found below:

DVD-R

 
DVD-RW

There are minor differences compared to reading the DVD+R/RW discs, but they are very marginal differences.

Once again the Samsung SH-W162C was average at reading DVD-R/RW.

Overall thoughts:

The Samsung SH-W162C is a respectable reader, it is by no means the fastest reader on the block, but during our read tests it proved reliably.

But now it's time to head on to a more interesting part: Writing CD-R and CD-RW discs…