Performance during CD-RW Media Processing

We proceed from write-once to rewritable media. Let’s see how well the BenQ DW1620 processes them.

Like with the CD-R format, the time difference between writing a 24x and a 32x disc is negligible, and the LG drive wins again (by a narrowest margin of 8 seconds). Overall, the BenQ has one of the best times among the drives we’ve tested so far, and the LG and the BenQ are both among the speediest devices when it comes to processing rewritable CD media. Now let’s check the quality of the burned discs.

It’s like what we saw with the 24x CD-R: the same burn algorithms (the BenQ’s P-CAV and the LG’s Z-CLV), but the BenQ took 3 seconds more than the competitor to burn the disc due to the operating Walking OPC technology, although it uses a more progressive burn algorithm. Both drives had no problems reading the discs. Let’s compare the quality of the discs they produced:

Alas, this time the BenQ’s results are far from perfect. The terrible billow of C1 errors at the beginning of the disc is the direct evidence to that. The total number of first encoder errors is 2.5 times less on the disc from the LG drive than on the BenQ’s disc. I must acknowledge that the BenQ DW1620 improves the result towards the end by dynamically correcting the power of its laser, and the BLER quickly returns to the norm. By the way, the rather numerous C2 errors (168 in total, while the LG has none) are also mostly located in the beginning of the disc. This situation speaks of some flaws in the burn strategy at the max speed. On the other hand, we again see a real proof that WOPC technology does work. Another confirmation of my point that there’re flaws in the burn strategy is the deviation of the Beta parameter at the beginning of the disc, and that’s why the LG drive is better in this factor, too. The uniformity of the Jitter rate is the same with both devices. So, overall, we see that the BenQ is worse than the GSA-4160 at burning CD-RW media at 24x speed, but on the other hand we have made sure Walking OPC really works and considerably improves the quality of the resulting disc even if the burn strategy is initially incorrect.

The reading and writing are exactly like we saw with the 24x CD-RW, so we’ll jump over to the quality tests.

The GSA-4160B isn’t brilliant in this test, but the BenQ DW1620 is even worse than that: there are too many first encoder errors for the disc to pass the test. Although the drive itself reads this disc without problems I wouldn’t warrant other devices are going to read it at all. So, the new BenQ fails this test, but we can’t be too critical about that since the manufacturer doesn’t guarantee the DW1620 to support 32x CD-RW media. Just keep it in mind that high-speed rewritable CDs shouldn’t be used with this drive.

All in all, the BenQ has some serious problems with CD-RW media, but they only concern the burn strategy which can be corrected in future firmware updates. At least, I hope it will be corrected.