X-bit labs

MSI DR16-B2 DVD±RW Dual Layer Burner: Repeated Success or New Heights? (page 18)

Category: Storage

by Vasily Melnik

[ 09/27/2005 | 09:43 PM ]

DVD-RW Discs Burn Quality at 2x speed

MSI DR16-B2
 

BenQ DW1620 
 

It looks similar, yes? Both drives have serious difficulties with discs of that type at the minimum speed. Even the new version of the firmware doesn’t help the BenQ DW1620 here – this drive doesn’t deliver satisfactory quality. The MSI DR16-B2, on the contrary, performs quite well. Yes, the level of errors is rather high, but it is not above the acceptable limit and the recorded disc was read successfully in the MSI as well as in other drives.

Unfortunately, the DVD-RW disc recorded by the MSI DR16-B2 at 2x speed didn’t pass the Beta/Jitter and TA tests, even though it was read by several optical drives I tried it in. So I don’t publish the diagrams for these tests but move on to the DVD-RW 4x format.

DVD-RW Discs Burn Quality at 4x speed

MSI DR16-B2
 

BenQ DW1620 
 

But here both drives produce discs of roughly the same and good quality. There are fewer errors on the disc recorded by the MSI drive, but the difference is too small to be taken seriously. I don’t publish the results of the Beta/Jitter test and the TA Test due to the same reasons as above.

Summarizing the performance of the two optical drives with rewritable DVDs, I should confess that neither of them is really good at processing such media. The MSI drive managed to produce a normal DVD-RW 2x disc, while the BenQ couldn’t do so even with the new firmware. The BenQ, however, is much better than its opponent at burning DVD+RW discs at 4x speed.

To conclude this review I will check these drives at extracting tracks from Audio CDs and at copying protected discs.