DVD-ROM Roundup Vol.4 - Page 16

Conclusion

To start with, we saw fast CD reading speed for the LiteOn due to its supported 52X speed, while the Asus and Samsung follow with 40X and 32X respectively. The seek times were also low for the LiteOn drive. On the other hand, with USRW reading, the LiteOn supports up to 24X and for this reason was the slowest among the drives, where the Asus and Samsung support 32X.

All the drives had similar performance when reading Single Layer pressed DVD-ROM media, where 16X speed was achieved with all the drives. The situation is not the same with Double Layer pressed media where Asus leads the race. When the other two drives finished the task reporting 8X, Asus was over 12X. Notice that the tests were done with the official firmware revisions. The same also happened with recordable media. The maximum speed for the LiteOn and Samsung at the end of reading, was close to 8X. In the same test, Asus was almost up to 10X.

Most owners use their DVD-ROM drives for transferring their pressed movie titles onto their hard disks. One more time, the Asus drive performed excellently. The average ripping speed, as it was reported by DVD Decrypter, was at 11620KB/s ( 8.4X). The transfer rates for the LiteOn and Samsung, for the same task, were 8715KB/s and 9376KB/s respectively.

A very strong advantage for the Samsung drive is its ability to read DVD-RAM media, while both the other drives do not recognize this format.

CD error correction was good for all the drives with the LiteOn shining through with the CD-Check Audio Test Disc and the Samsung with the ABEX TCD-721R. Generally, the performance was similar for all drives.

According to our DVD error correction tests, the LiteOn performed flawlessly. Very good performance was also shown by the other two drives with the exception of a single reading error that the Samsung drive reported during the reading of the ABEX TDR-845 test disc.

The DAE speed was similar for the LiteOn and Asus drives, nearing 40X, while the Samsung lagged behind due to its 32X supported speed. The advanced DAE quality score from CDSpeed was 100 for all drives. The LiteOn drive also managed to read successfully both 90min and 99min test discs, while the Asus failed with the 99min disc and the Samsung with the 90min.

Key2Audio and CDS200, AudioCD protections, worked partially in the drives. Key2Audio proved to be a minor problem for the LiteOn drive while CDS200 for the Asus and Samsung. The latest CDS 200.0.4 - 3.0 build 16a was not a problem for any of the drives.

Asus is fast in ripping protected CD games, especially with SafeDisk protection where the other two drives had major problems. Overall, the LiteOn was the slowest and Asus the fastest.

The ability of the Asus and LiteOn drives to measure quality in DVD media is a strong feature. Asus works well with CDSpeed while LiteOn with Kprobe. Their accuracy however cannot be compared to a reference device and the results can only be used for personal comparisons.

Another important feature of any drive, at least in our estimations, is its unofficial support from firmware revisions that can change the behavior of the drive. In our tests, the LiteOn leads the race in this regard, while the Asus has no unofficial firmware support, not even for setting the drive to region free. The Samsung has a previous firmware release with region free support, while the LiteOn can be flashed so that the drive can read 16X DVD SL media and 10X for DL. The region free option is also available.

The pricing for all three drives is almost the same, at around $25.