Here we will be comparing the reading capabilities of all eight drives. The test media for each drive was measured with Nero CD DVD Speed utility and then the reported values were gathered together and presented in the following graphs, much like the procedure carried out in our standard drive reviews. For obvious reasons, the comparison will concentrate on "Speed Averages".

The BenQ, LiteOn, Plextor and Samsung drives were the fastest with Pressed CD media as reported be CD DVD Speed. So, three original manufacture drives (BenQ DW1640, LiteOn 1693S and Samsung TS-H552U) and the one OEM drive are vying for fastest drive with the LiteOn just edging out the Plextor for top spot.

Reading CDR media this time, the same four drives were again the fastest readers. The LiteOn remained at the top joined this time by the BenQ drive. Both drives reported the same average speed of 37.39X.

In this case, with 24X USRW media, the BenQ, NEC and Plextor drives achieved the best speeds, due to their supported USRW media reading speed of 48X maximum as opposed to 32X for the other drives.

- DVD Format

The comparison tables that follow, are once more created from measurements reported by Nero CD DVD Speed, this time using three Pressed DVD media, one single layer and two Dual Layered discs (one PTP and one OTP).

Using Pressed Single Layer DVD-ROM media, all drives reached their maximum supported reading speeds. It's a fairly even contest here and there are no significant speed differences between the drives.

"The two layers of a PTP DVD-ROM disc are read sequentially with the drive starting reading from the inner part of the disc, which is the beginning of each layer, progressing towards the outer range for each layer." The Asus DRW 1608P and Pioneer DVR-109 drives managed to achieve the best reading speeds with 9.5X and 9.47X respectively. The BenQ DW1640 and Plextor 740A also reported fast speeds.

"The first layer of an OTP dual layer DVD-ROM is read exactly the same way as the first layer of the PTP disc we tested previously. The difference here is the reading strategy of the second layer on the disc. The beginning of the second layer is located in the outer part of the disc, so the drive starts reading from the outer tracks towards the inner part of the disc." In this case, the Plextor drive proved to be the fastest, reporting an average speed of 9.98X followed by the Asus and Pioneer drives.

In both cases, with DVD-R and DVD+R media, the best reading speeds came from the BenQ, Plextor and NEC drives, with the BenQ drive being a little bit faster in both cases.

Same behaviour with these test media, as the NEC, BenQ and Plextor drives managed to achieve the highest reading speeds, thanks to their higher supported maximum reading speed.

-DVD Ripping

We used DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0 in order to rip DVD-ROM movie files and measure the ripping speed for each of the reviewed drives. The results are listed in the following table. The movie used was "The Matrix" DVD-ROM (original).

The Plextor OEM and BenQ drives managed to achieve highest ripping speed.

Summary

As an overall summation when reading CD-DVD media, we can say that the BenQ and Plextor drives are the fastest, although the LiteOn is still the fastest CD reader out there.