Throughout this review, we saw some of the main capabilities of the DW1625 BenQ burner, apart from the LightScribe feature. Although similar to the 1620, a previous release from BenQ, it can not write -R media at 16X speed, as its max supported speed is 8X for that media type.

The drive supports a wide range of media brands and has not shown a conflict with any of the known brands used for this review. Its reading speed is quite good, both with the CD and DVD formats. As a DVD ripper, it can not match the LiteOn drives, which are known for their ripping capabilities but it is not slow by any means, managing to achieve a fairly good speed. It did not break the barrier of 9000 kB per second but it did get very close.

The drive comes in beige....

Unfortunately, it does not support overburning and does not recognize 90mins CD audio discs. Error correction is very good and will satisfy most end user's needs, since it managed to flawlesly read all test media inserted, whether that be CD or DVD.

...and in black...

The supported DL writing speed is not satisfactory (2.4X max) since almost all new releases support 4X DL writing and some up to 6X DL burning speed. But if you have patience, you will end up with a very good quality burn as the graphs in the previous pages of this review confirm. The DVD quality is satisfactory, with good burns with 16X +R media, and 8X -R media as well. A really good burner, even though it does not support up to 16X for -R media.

As for the DVD±RW media, the performance did not leave us satisfied, producing average quality burns at the max supported speed of 4X in both cases.

The price of the drive is around US$85.

- The Good

• Very good error correction
• Supports DVD+R Double Layer media writing at 4X
• Supports BookType setting for DVD+R/RW media and Double Layer media
• Can be used to measure (scan) DVD±R/RW media
• Can read protected Audio discs (CDS200, Key2Audio)

- The Bad

• 8X DVD-R max burning speed.
• Does not support overburning with DVD±R/RW media

- Like To be fixed

• Quality with RW media.

Retail Package
Reading
Error Correction
Protected Discs
Writing
Features