Data Tests: (80min and RW CDs)

- 80min tests (used PleXWriter PX-W8220):
The KenWood 72x TrueX CD-Rom also had problems with the 80min CDs written in mode2. We also compared it's performance with the Afreey 50x and Plextor 40x CD-Roms:

The above graph shows that with the drive refused to finish the test. Other CD-Roms (Alfreey and Plextor) don't have any problem reading LeadData 80min CDs.

The above graph shows that this time KenWood 72x TrueX completed the test but gave back mediocre performance (7.62x average), where the other CD-Roms didn't have any problem reading the FujiFilm 80min CD.

- CDR-W tests (used Sanyo CRD-BP2):
The drive refused to read the two RW CDs, we wrote at 4x recording speed with Nero 5.0. Both CDs were tested in Plextor 40x, Teac40x, Sanyo CRD-Bp2 and Sanyo CRD-BP900P and were read fine.

Verdict of CDR Media Tests:
The KenWood 72x TrueX CDR media tests gave different results from pressed CD tests. As it seems KenWood 72x had troubles reading CDR Media written at high speeds (above 8x) when you are using low-quality media (Ritek, Maxell, Parrot). In order to be sure that there was not any problem with media we used same written media into other CD-Roms (Plextor40, Teac40x, Alfreey50x), which read the CDs without any problem. Notice that in some cases the KenWood 72x TrueX refused to read written CDs (like Parrot media…)

When we used good quality media (Mitsui, Princo, Traxdata, BASF, Ricoh) the results were very good just like pressed CDs.  Especially KenWood 72x TrueX CD-Rom with the Mitsui media gave superb performance. The Kenwood reads Mode 2 discs also very poorly (LeadData80 and Fuji80 were both mode 2 discs). Last, we did not manage to check RW reading speeds since the drive refused to read two different RW media, which was working with other CD-Roms and CDR-W, drives.

As KenWood tech support said: "...Our drive uses 1 laser source which is split into 7 beams, the total laser power is higher then a single beam drive, but still a single beam in our drive is 1/7th the total power. This means that each of our seven beams is lower in power then a single beam drive. This is the reason it's harder for the 72X drive to read fast recorded disks (CDR)...". We think that it should not matter at which speed a disc is written since recorders adjust the laser power depending on the media surface and recording speed..."