BenQ DW1600A DL Recorder - Page 12

- Burning Tests

We burned 4315MB of data on various DVD+R, DVD+RW media. (We remind you that -R/-RW media is not supported with this drive yet). We used the maximum allowed writing speed for each disc.

Below are all the results with the various media types used.

• 4X Speed DVD recording times (sec)

At 4X, there were no big surprises with the writing speed, with the fastest burning time being 878sec, with Taiyo Yuden 4X media.

• 8X Speed DVD recording times (sec)

• 12X Speed DVD recording times (sec)

When we tried to burn at 8X speed, we observed that the drive supports up to 12X for 3A and Philips 8X media (over-speed burning). We used the maximum speed allowed for these discs, along with normal 12X media. The best results came with Maxell 12X media (387sec).

BenQ claims that more 8X media will be recorded at 12X in the future as new firmware revisions will be released to support a wider range of over-speed burning compatible media. The following figure indicates the supported writing speeds for Philips 8X media under Nero.

• 16X Speed DVD recording times (sec)

At 16X, Philips media performed better than Plextor/TY 16X media, achieving 358sec burning time (5:58min).

It is very interesting to investigate the writing quality for 16X. Comments on the writing quality test results can be seen later on this review.

- DVD Overburning Test

Using Nero CD-DVD Speed v3.01, we tested if the BenQ DW1600A DL can overburn using DVD+R media. Unfortunately, the drive does not support overburning, when it comes to DVD+R media, giving the following error with all inserted media.