LG GSA-4163B

Review Pages

LG GSA-4163B DL Burner - Page 10

DVD Recording Tests

- Writing Performance

The LG GSA-4163B supports DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW and DVD-RAM writing. The maximum supported speeds are 16X P-CAV for DVD+R and DVD-R, 8X Z-CLV for DVD+RW, 6X CLV for DVD-RW, 4X CLV for DVD+R9 and 5X P-CAV for DVD-RAM media. Notice that the difference between the LG GSA-4163B and the previous LG GSA-4160B models are not only in maximum supported speeds but also in writing strategies.

Nero Burning Rom reported speeds are shown below, after inserting a DVD+R 16X certified disc.

Note that when the software identifies a disc as 8X or higher, the 2X or the 2,4X writing speed option, for DVD-R and DVD+R respectively, is not available. However, if the maximum speed is 4X, 2X or 2.4X writing speed is available.

By using Nero CD-DVD Speed with DVD-R and DVD+R media, we are able to see the supported writing strategy for each speed and format for this burner. Click on each image below for a complete CDSpeed graph.

DVD+R media @ 16X

According to the graph above, the writing strategy is P-CAV, and not CAV as is the case for most drives, where the 16X speed is reached relatively early and remains for approximately 800MB. Furthermore, the test started at a speed of 7.28X and for those two reasons, the LG drive proved to be the fastest 16X DVD+R recorder.

DVD+R media @ 12X

For 12X, the writing strategy is Z-CLV.

DVD+R media @ 8X

DVD-R media @ 16X

As with the DVD+R format, the same is happening here with DVD-R. For the same two reasons we mentioned above, the drive is also the fastest with DVD-R.

DVD-R media @ 8X

DVD+RW media @ 8X

The drive reaches the maximum 8X speed too early and kept it until the end of the burning process.

DVD-RW media @ 6X

6X CLV for the DVD-RW format. Not bad...

- Burning Tests

We burned 4315MB of data on various DVD±R, DVD±RW media. We used the maximum allowed writing speed for each disc.

DVD-R/-RW media

The reported writing time 5:17min at 16X is the slowest we ever experience. The excusion for this is the writing strategy we mentioned above. Notice how stable is the performance, almost the same times for each recording speed.

DVD+R/+RW media

As we have already mentioned a few times, we will say it again that the drive is the fastest 16X burner. Once again, stable performance.

- Comparison with other drives

No matter what the format is, the LG GSA-4163B is unbeatable...

- DVD Overburning Tests

Using Nero CD-DVD Speed, we tested to see if the drive can overburn using DVD+R and DVD-R media. Unfortunately, the drive does not support overburning, giving the following error with all inserted media.