Teac DV-W50D and Memorex Dual-X1 - Page 16

Conclusion

Teac DV-W50D and Memorex Dual X-1 are having almost the same performance, as they are "wearing" the same series of chipset. Of course that doesn't mean that the drives are the same. Generally the majority of the common users will not face up any problems in their daily tasks, although we found out some minor issues that their companies could improve through firmware upgrades.

The retail packages are almost complete, containing software for CD/DVD authoring and playback, as well as some useful utilities. However there are not enough included blank media. Teac has only a blank DVD-R and a CD-R media and Memorex a DVD+R 4X and a DVD+RW 2X blank media.

In the reading part, the drives support the 12X reading speed for DVD-ROM and 6X for DVD+R/+RW/-R/-RW formats. The drives were slightly faster in the corresponding tests, as it commonly happens with the latest drives.

Both drives have excellent CD writing quality with very low jitter values. However the C2 accuracy could be better. They can also playback and rip easily Key2Audio and CDS200 audio protections discs.

Teac and Memorex drives supports 4x burning speed on all the DVD-R and DVD+R media we tested, providing writing times less than 15 min for 4.38GB. The DVD error correction of both drives is very good; they managed to playback correctly all the defected DVD test discs without reporting any read problems. The DVD writing quality was acceptable with low PI values, while the PO error rate could be lower with some media.

The seek times for the CD and DVD formats were increased, in all tests the performance was below average. A firmware upgrade will probably solve the problem.

The ability to create working backups of the latest SafeDisc v.2 protected titles is limited for both Teac and Memorex drives. Software submission is required in order to produce working backups of SafeDisc v2.50 or higher.

Teac DV-W50D and Memorex Dual X-1 are two competitive drives with almost the same retail price at approximately $135~160. With decent performance and reasonable price, both deserve a position in your PC sleeves. However both companies have recently announced their new models at 8x DVD recording speed. The DVD recording market is currently very aggressive so the prices are expected to decrease as the competition rises.