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 sports a specified read speed of 16X for DVD's and 52X for CD's. 

Pressed discs:

For this test we used a pressed CD-ROM disc containing PlexTools v1.08 that is exactly 74 minutes long. Below you will see the produced result:

The drive did not reach its rated speed as it slowed down when hitting 48X. We though that it may be our disc and tried again with an plextools 2.02 disc which is close to 80 minutes long:

Better this time but still not perfect as it slowed down again. These test results shows that the drive is very selective when it comes to which discs it will read, our test disc is pretty close to perfect with only a few really tiny scratches. Anyway let us see how this compares to other 52X readers:

Although it have the highest starting speed it ends up as the slowest overall drive due to the speed drop. The seek times is among the highest as well for the Samsung.

CD-Recordable Discs:

For this test we made a copy of the original PlexTools v1.08 CD. The disc we used was a Plextor 48X certified CD-R disc manufactured by Taiyo Yuden.

For CD-R disc the reading speed is locked to 40X reading, look below for how this compares to other drives.

It looses the battle against the other drives when it comes to CD-R disc reading due to its reading speed of only 40X for CD-R discs. On the other hand seek times improved, placing it in the middle along with the other drives.

CD-ReWritable discs:

Again we made a copy of the original PlexTools v1.08 disc, this time we used a plextor High Speed (10X) CD-RW disc made by Ricoh.

As with CD-R disc the drive is locked at 40X for CD-RW discs as well, giving an average speed of 31.35X. Below is the usual comparison table:

For CD-RW discs it ends up at about the same speed as the Lite-On LTR-52246S, only the plextor premium is able to beat it with a long shot. For seek times it's in the middle of the pack this time as well.

Audio - Digital Audio Extraction:

To test the digital audio extraction performance of the Samsung SM-352B we again 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 about 78 minutes long (77:56:58).

The drive aimed at reading the disc at 48X, but like with the original plextools disc it slows down at the end. Comparison table:

This time as well it places last due to its 48X music reading speed along with the speed drop at the end.

Below is the results produced by EAC:

Burst mode

Secure mode

The drive performed as expected in burst mode when we count in the speed drop at the end, and reached an average speed of 30.8X. In secure mode this drive is simply outstanding and reached an average of 16.9X, the highest we have ever measured with any drive.

Advanced audio - DAE quality test:

Before we move on to testing DVD read speeds we will take a last audio test, this time we used the 'Advanced DAE Quality Test" feature in CD-Speed.

The Samsung SM-352B got an average speed of 33.15X as well as a perfect score of 100.0 in the quality test. But on the other side it does not support reading data from the Lead-in and lead-out. According to the test it's only able to do on the fly copying at speeds up to 8X.

DVD reading performance:

Again we will use Nero CD-Speed to measure the reading performance, this time for various types of DVD discs.

DVD - DVD-Video:

For our DVD reading performance tests we are going to start with a single and dual 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. Notice: Even if some of these discs contains DVD-Video they are identified as DVD-ROM discs for a reason or another, it's a disc issue and not a drive issue, we did several tests and this do not seem to affect the results of the tests in any way.

For the single layer disc the drive slowed down a bit at the end, it also seems like it would not completely reach 16X without the slowdown either. The dual layer disc was read at 8X Max speed.

Notice that CD-speed actually reports the highest speed as the and reading speed for the dual layer disc. To sum up the test result from this test is easy: it's slowest for the single layer disc and fastest for the dual layer disc.

DVD - DVD+R(W):

For this test we used an Arita 4X DVD+R and a Memorex 2.4X DVD+RW with about 4,4Gb of data. Below are the results:

While the drive did not read the discs at full speed it did read them without any problems. Let us compare the result with other drives and see how it compares to those:

While the drive had no problems reading the discs it ended up as the slowest drive of them all.

DVD - DVD-R/RW:

For this test we used a Princo 4X DVD-R disc and a Ritek 1X DVD-RW disc filled with about 4,4Gb of data. Our test results are found below:

As we could see out from these graphs, the drive performed nearly the same with DVD-R/RW discs as with DVD+R/RW discs. Below is a comparison table:

Again it was the slower drive and did only beat the speed of the Toshiba.

DVD - DVD-RAM:

This drive also supports reading DVD-RAM discs and here are our test results:

The reading of the disc was very bumpy and locked to around 2X. How this compares to two other drives supporting to read the DVD-RAM format is found below:

This time as well it came out as the slowest drive.

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