Next go rewritable DVDs.

With the previous version of the firmware the drive had a high PI error rate when burning DVD+RWs at 4x speed. Now we enjoy a considerable improvement with the new firmware: the level of PI errors is lower by almost 100%, i.e. in double! We can now say that the BenQ DW1620 produces excellent +R/RW disc at all the burn speeds it supports.

Let’s now check up the quality of the DVD-RW format. With the older firmware, the drive had problems with discs of that type. It burned and read them without problems, but we couldn’t evaluate the burn quality or to read these discs in other optical drives.

BenQ DW1620 DVD-RW disc burning quality at 2x speed
with B7T9 firmware

Everything is right now. The disc was burned and read without a hitch; it then could pass the quality check and was read by other drives without problems. As for the results of the quality check, they are not quite pleasing. The PI failure rate is within the norm, but the PI error rate isn’t – you can clearly see the moments Walking OPC technology adjusted the laser power and adjusted it wrongly throughout the entire burn session. So the PI error rate grew up in the first half of the disc and diminished just a little (below the maximum) in the second half. All in all, the manufacturer has something to apply itself to: the quality of the DVD-RW disc written by the DW1620 drive is simply bad. What about the higher speed?

BenQ DW1620 DVD-RW disc burning quality at 4x speed
with B7T9 firmware
 

But here’s an excellent result! The low PI error/failure rate is a proof of a good quality of the resulting disc. So we again meet a common problem when the manufacturer pays little attention to optimizing the burn strategy at minimal speeds. Their reasoning is logical: low-speed media are leaving the market, and it’s unreasonable to burn high-speed discs at low speeds. Anyway, the problem exists and they might have taken the trouble of solving it.

Summing up the performance of the BenQ DW1620 drive with the new firmware we can’t but acknowledge the good work done by the manufacturer as concerns the quality of writing. The changes over the previous firmware are so impressive that we decided to discuss them in a separate review. In fact, the new firmware solves almost all the defects we observed in our first review, so we strongly recommend it for use by all owners of the BenQ DW1620 drive. In its current shape the drive claims to be among the best devices in its class. There are in fact only two problems left: the burning of dual-layer media and the burning of DVD-RWs at the minimal speed. Maybe the quality of burning DVD-Rs can also be improved upon a little more.

And if the manufacturer keeps its rate in updating the firmware, without compromising the quality of these updates, we will welcome it as one of the best manufacturers of optical drives.