Sony DRU-840A detail information

Reading performance

We will using Nero CD/DVD-Speed to read various CD and DVD Discs; both burned and pressed for the Reading Performance section of the review. 

Pressed CD-ROM discs

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

The Sony DRU-840A reached 45.91X, so how does that compare with other newer drives, let’s take a look here:

The Sony DRU-840A reads on average with the other drives in speed and seek times.

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 DRU-840A reached the speed of 48.94X when reading a full CD-R disc.  Let’s take a look on how that compares with other drives.

With our CD-Recordable Disc the Sony DRU-840A performs faster than our other drives and the seek times are very good as you can see.

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 DRU-840A reaches a read speed of 41.69X; let’s compare this with our other tested drives:

The Sony DRU-840A is among the fastest at reading our CD-Rewritable disc.

Audio – Digital Audio Extraction

To test digital audio extraction performance with the Sony DRU-840A we used Nero CD-DVD Speed to measure the transfer rate; the audio disc we used is 74:00:00 in length.

The Sony DRU-840A reached the speed of 40.41X when reading our Audio-CD; let’s take a look on how that compares with our other tested drives below:

The Sony DRU-840A performed on average in regards to speed, however, the seek times were very good.

DVD reading performance

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 DRU-840A at reading “Pressed” DVD-Video discs both Single Layer and Double Layer.

DVD-Video Single Layer

DVD-Video Double Layer

The Sony DRU-840A read the SL DVD-Video disc at 12.23X and the DL DVD-Video disc at 12.28X.  The specifications as published by Sony do not annotate the read speed for DVD-Video; we will state that this is a respectable speed and faster that some of our other tested drives as you can see here:

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 DRU-840A reads DVD+R/RW media as compared with other drives:

The Sony DRU-840A is among the fastest of our drives at reading DVD+R/RW media.

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 DRU-840A compares with other drives for reading these media:

Here again the Sony DRU-840A is among the fastest of our tested drives at reading DVD-R/RW media.

DVD±R DL

For this test we used a Verbatim 8X DVD+R DL disc and a Verbatim 4X DVD–R DL disc filled with 7.96GB of data.  (Thanks to Verbatim USA for sending us this media.)

DVD+R DL

DVD-R DL

The Sony DRU-840A reads both media at just above 12X.  The specifications on the Sony Website for this drive to not list a specified read speed for DVD+R DL media.  The 12X plus speeds is respectful.

DVD-RAM

For this part of our test we are using a Maxell 12x DVD-RAM filled with 4.27GB of data. Our test results are found below:

The Sony DRU-840A will read DVD-RAM at 12X; reading this disc in 5 minutes and 37 seconds.

Features

CD-R/CD-RW writing performance