CDFreaks Poll
I buy a console for gaming only
Yes
No
Based on 1277 ratings
Sony BWU-200S Blu-ray Rewritable Drive Review

Sony BWU-200S detail information

Posted by Kip R.
Posted on 12/01/08 05:13
Number of views 15802
Manufacturer Sony
Product Sony BWU-200S
Description Internal Blu-ray Disc Rewritable Drive
Menu
Reading Performance

  

We will use Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD Discs; including audio discs and DVD-Video media.

CD reading performance   

Pressed CD-ROM discs

We used an original pressed CD-ROM disc containing 72.39.55 minutes of data.

The Sony BWU-200S reached 41.62X, so how does that compare with other Blu-ray drives, let’s take a look here:

The Sony BWU-200S is a fast reader when compared with other Blu-ray drives.

CD-Recordable Discs

For this test we used a Data CD-R that we created with Nero CD-DVD Speed in “create data disc” mode.  The disc was a Maxell 48X certified disc manufactured by Ritek.  (Thanks to Maxell for sending us this media.)

The Sony BWU-200S reached the speed of 41.66X when reading a full CD-R disc.  Let’s take a look on how that compares with other Blu-ray drives.

With our CD-Recordable Disc the Sony BWU-200S is the fastest of our tested Blu-ray drives.

CD-Rewritable discs

For the CD-Rewritable tests we created a Data CD using Nero CD-DVD Speeds’ “create data disc”.  We used a Verbatim 32X CD-RW.  (We thank Verbatim USA for sending us this media)

The Sony BWU-200S reaches a read speed of 33.48X; let’s compare this with our other tested Blu-ray drives:

The Sony BWU-200S performed on average while reading our CD-Rewritable disc.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction

To test digital audio extraction performance with the Sony BWU-200S we used Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the transfer rate; the audio disc we used is 74:00:00 in length.

The Sony BWU-200S reached the speed of 24.35X when reading our Audio-CD; let’s take a look on how that compares with our other tested drives below:

The Sony BWU-200S was the slowest with Digital Audio Extraction times.

Advanced audio – DAE quality test  

For the Advanced Audio DAE test we used the “Advanced DAE Quality Test” feature of Nero CD-DVD Speed.  The CD-R media used is a 40X certified Memorex Music CD-R manufactured by Ritek. (Thanks to Memorex USA for sending us this media.)

The Sony BWU-200S will permit “On-The-Fly” copying at all tested speeds through 6X; the drive does not support reading data from the Lead-Out.

DVD reading performance

DVD-ROM “Pressed Disc”

We utilized Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the reading performance.  We will to the reading performance testing on various types of DVD discs.  To start off with we will test the Sony BWU-200S at reading “Pressed” DVD-Video discs both Single Layer and Double Layer.

DVD-Video Single Layer

 

DVD-Video Double Layer

The Sony BWU-200S read the SL DVD-Video disc at 6.12X and the DL DVD-Video disc at 6.22X.  Let’s take a look below to see how the drive compared with other we have tested:

DVD+R/RW  

For testing the read speed of DVD+R and DVD+RW discs we used Verbatim 16X DVD+R and 8X DVD+RW.  Both Discs were written with 4.38GB of data using Nero CD-DVD Speed.  (Thanks to Verbatim USA for sending us this media.) See the results below:

DVD+R

DVD+RW

We have prepared this table to show you how the Sony BWU-200S reads DVD+R/RW media as compared with other drives:

The Sony BWU-200S is among the fastest at reading our DVD+R test disc, however at reading the DVD+RW it performed on average with other tested drives.

DVD-R/RW  

For testing the DVD-R and DVD-RW reading performance we used Verbatim discs we used Verbatim 16X DVD-R and 6X DVD-RW.  (Thanks to Verbatim USA for sending us this media.) Below you will find our test results.

DVD-R

DVD-RW

We have also provided this table to show how the Sony BWU-200S compares with other drives for reading these media:

Here the Sony BWU-200S is the second fastest of our tested drives at reading DVD-R and average at reading our DVD-RW media.

DVD±R DL

For this test we used a Verbatim DVD±R DL discs filled with data.

DVD+R DL

DVD-R DL

Below we have provided a table to show how the Sony BWU-200S compares with other Blu-ray drives.

DVD-RAM

For this part of our test we are using a Maxell 5x DVD-RAM filled with 4.27GB of data. Our test results are found below:

The Sony BWU-200S will read DVD-RAM at 5X; reading this disc in 11 minutes and 02 seconds.

Want to submit your own review? Click here
I have owned this burner for about a week and a half. So far, so good - no coasters burned yet. A good thing with blank media at $15-20USD. My Panasonic DMP-BD10 home player has no problems playing home HD videos burned with the Sony burner.

Check out your player's format capability before burning any discs with any BD burner. Some players (like my Panny) will play only BDMV format; some players will play BDAV. This burner will burn either, but some burning software won't support BDAV. I am using Ulead Movie Factory with the HD add-in; it will burn either format.

Others have noted that the Sony's drawer won't fit thru a normal cutout - that was the situation with my Dell XPS400. Tried trimming out the hole in the Dell; gave up and mounted the burner in an external enclosure.

Overall, thumbs up even at the $600USD price.
Harry, what is the enclosure that you use, please?
hmm, as in most of Kip's reviews there are no pictures of the inside of the drive, which in my opinion tells us a lot more about the technology used inside. Not at all interested in how the left and right side of the drive looks like. :c
Only $500 more to go until it's affordable.
Cheaper per gigabyte to get an HDD and download x264 rips ;)
Ouch! $600, well. it IS a blue ray drive after all.. Yes dvds were crazy expensive too in their day.. but then again the format war is in the midst of Gettysburg battle. So it won't be long before one camp caves in.. and popularity forces price redux.
"Harry, what is the enclosure that you use, please?"

It is actually a cannabilized external one for a DVD drive. External 5.25" SATA enclosures are a little hard to find and are well over $50 when you do. I had to run a power cable and SATA cable out of the back of the PC and the back of the external enclosure. The enclosure I use has a power switch that is not maintained and the PC showed drive not available when booting if the power was not on. So, I ran an cable from the PC power supply. Kinda junky doing it that way, but it works.
The LG GGW-H20L is selling for about $400 on ebay. It can write BD-R at 6x though 6x media seems not available yet. I tried TDK BD-R 25GB 2x certified media using the bundled software power2go. It was recognized as 4x by the software and finished writing a full disc in about 25 minutes. The above review didn't mention TDK BD-R. I wonder how BWU200S would perform with this media.
Does it work under 64-bit Windows (WinXP Pro x64 or Vista 64)?
What do you think? Leave your comments!

Your message
:) :( ;) :r :d :B :X :c :o :g :+ :p :* :S

Your name
Your e-mail


Type in the code

Don't like to type in this code? Please register or login.
Related tags
A tag is a relevant keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (like picture, product, or video clip), thus describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification of information it is applied to. We use it to make searching our database easier and enable all our users to contribute to our database.

Add related tags
CD Freaks allows items to be tagged with objective specifications, no opinions or subjective descriptions. When your start typing our system will suggest tags, if this is what you mean, please use these first. Our system will also check for spelling mistakes and correct them to keep our database consistent. Finally tags are moderated by our team members.

    Related content
    Related reviews/articles
    Visit the Forum
    Get the latest reviews via RSS RSS