SiSoftware Sandra Professional 2003

Our last benchmark is going to show us overall performance rating after working with various medium types. The results suggest that the maximum performance was on a printed CD (which was included with a magazine). The rating is one third lower on “Air Speed” DVD. Lastly, this rating fell 1.5 times down on a standard CD with an MPEG4 movie.

Conclusion

SONY developed a really interesting product. The main and evident advantage of this drive is the support of both competing writable and re-writable DVD standards. The owner of DRU-500A can work with both types of disks, without worrying which of them to choose and without waiting for the two developer groups to find the winner. The main problem for every DVD-RW drive buyer is to pick up the right model, which would continue living if one of the two standards dies. Here this problem is eliminated completely.

The multi-functionality of Sony’s drive is its strong point, just like in all other similar products. It can replace a CD-ROM, CD-RW and DVD-ROM together. So, you can free 5”-bays for other devices because usually you buy optical drives one by one for financial or any other reasons, so that in the end they duplicate some of each other’s features.

The retail version of the product doesn’t cause any installation, connection or usage problems. You won’t need any additional accessories or special software.

As for the speed, the drive proved true to its specs. It showed stable read speed on every CD type. Some drives perform slower with CD-RW, but we didn’t see that by Sony DRU500A. It also works well with audio CDs.

Now, let’s add a fly into the ointment. The price of this model is a little less than $400. Just think if you really need this drive that much now :)

As for not really negative, but not very positive issues, we could mention some problems revealed when reading a CD-ROM with CD WinBench 99 and when trying to read damaged disks. The new standard, Mount Rainier, is not supported. As for the noise, the drive was quite silent – it is not much of a sprinter after all. But there was perceptible vibration, when it stood on the desk, at least.

Anyway, all these drawbacks shouldn’t really confuse you, though. The overall impression left by the device is highly positive: there is no alternative to this model today.