Now let’s try to drop the burn speed and see what happens.

We again see different burn algorithms in action. The BenQ uses the progressive P-CAV mechanism, while the LG again employs Z-CLV (the program erroneously reports ordinary CLV). Again, the burn graph of the BenQ drive shows you Walking OPC and BLER OPC technologies in operation. These two technologies in fact account for the minor time lag between this drive and its opponent: despite using the faster P-CAV algorithm, the BenQ DW1620 took 8 second more than the LG drive. This difference is negligible, though, especially if it brings us an improvement in the quality of the resulting disc which we’re going to check out right now.

And again the two competitors behave much alike. The LG GSA-4160 still has fewer first encoder errors, but the difference between the drives is smaller here (7,962 errors). But the disc written by the BenQ has fewer E22 errors (3 errors against 43 errors of the LG GSA-4160). The Beta/Jitter parameters are normal, too. Like at 40x speed, the Jitter graph of the LG drive is cleaner, although the BenQ has improved in this parameter. So, again, both models produce discs of a very high quality at this speed, and there’s almost no difference between them.

The BenQ uses its WOPC and BLER OPC technologies and thus performs the burning slower than the LG drive. Both discs were read without problems, but let’s check out their quality anyway.

At the minimal burn speed there’s a bigger discrepancy between the discs produced by the two drives. The number of C2 errors is almost the same, but the total of C1 errors is better with the LG (9,996 again BenQ’s 19,992). Evidently the BenQ’s burn strategy for this speed leaves place for improvement. BenQ’s WOPC technology helps to make up for that, though. The spike of C1 errors falls on the beginning of the disc and is going down afterwards. The Beta/Jitter parameters are normal with both drives.

Summarizing the CD-R burn quality results, I want to say that both devices perform very well with media of that type. The LG produced a disc of a slightly better quality at the maximum burn speed, but at 24x the results are almost identical – the LG has fewer C1 errors, but the BenQ almost doesn’t have any C2 errors (the three errors are the disc’s rather than the drive’s fault). At 16x the BenQ looks worse, as the developers must have paid little attention to the reduced burn speeds in the current firmware version. Walking OPC technology quickly compensated for this defect, and the drive produced a disc of an acceptable quality (save for the very beginning). So, we’ve got another DVD-burner that’s good with CD-R discs, and that’s a really satisfying fact.