Let’s now try it at a higher burn speed.

The burning was done without problems, but the disc written by the BenQ DW1620 lacks quality. In spite of the low level of PI Failures, the number of PI error blocks is too high (almost 80 times their number on the disc written by the LG drive). Judging by their distribution, WOPC technology once again wrongly selects the power of the laser. Or rather it couldn’t find the optimal mode, although was trying to do it throughout the entire burn session. Yes, although the written disc is read without problems, I can’t call the results of the BenQ in this test good. That’s sad considering the excellent quality of the DVD+RW at the min speed.

As for the relationships of this model with the DVD-RW format, they are queer. With the version B7P9 firmware the drive successfully wrote and read such discs at both min and max speeds, but none of the drives capable of estimating the number of PI Errors and Failures couldn’t identify these discs afterwards. So, before clearing this all out, we don’t publish the results for the DVD-RW format.

Summing up the performance of the BenQ DW1620 in the DVD-related tests I should confess I can’t call it either bad or good. This drive would be perfect if it were not for the flaws at burning dual-layer media, at burning DVD-R discs at 8x and DVD+RW discs at 4x. The astonishing situation with the DVD-RW format adds more to our discontent. The drive has a high potential, which is regrettably not realized fully as yet. So, I don’t want to make my final verdict before trying a next firmware update.