The already excellent GSA-4163B has been replaced by the GSA-4167B. So it would be rather interesting to see what is new from LG. Firstly, the supported writing speeds have been increased, allowing LG to compete against other manufacturers. The CD writing speed has reached 48X while for DVD+RW and DVD-RW, it has been increased to 8X and 6X respectively. DVD+R DL now is supported up to 6X while DVD-R DL writing added in the drive's features at 4X speed. Although there are currently drives even faster than this on the market.

Starting off with reading, the LG can read CD up to 48X but a better error correction would be welcomed. LG retain the same behaviour on this as it was with the GSA-4163B. Not many drives can read our test 90/99min CDs where LG had no problems at all. The DVD reading speeds for the GSA-4167B were similar to those of the GSA-4163B, with the only difference that pressed double layer DVDs now can be read up to 12X instead of 8X. No change at all with DVD-Video ripping. The DVD error correction once again is strong and the drive won't have any problems with this.

Audio protection is not problem for the GSA-4167B, as it wasn't for the GSA-4163B, while once again the LG will rip all the game protections quite quickly but with Safedisc, it will create working backups only with older versions.

CD writing is now up to 48X from 40X and US-RW 32 up from 24X as it used to be with the GSA-4163B. The burning quality is good, despite the Clover System's reports which are always strict, but then we are talking about high speed recording.

Once again, the LG will burn DVD+R and DVD-R media at 16X with times below 6 minutes. We would like to see here more media being supported at these speeds or even at 12X, although there has been a minor improvement on this. At 8X, the drive reported great stability since it managed to burn almost all tested media with similar times. RW recording times are also rather low in comparison to the competition. The supported speeds for the DL formats are satisfactory but the competition already offers higher speeds.

What about DVD writing quality? Is this still excellent as it was with GSA-4163B? Partially yes; it is very good but there are cases with some media which still need improvement, something you can see by reading the respective pages in this article. It is highly recommended you install the latest available firmware revision, as we did upgrading to fw DL11. We don't dare describe the writing quality with the previous fw DL10. With DL media, the quality is great.

As for features, the drive once again supports reading/writing DVD-RAM but not quality scans. Bitsetting for DVD+R and DVD+R DL media is present here, but still not for DVD+RW.

At the time of this review, there was no price for the LG GSA-4167B on the e-market.

- The Good

• Very good DVD error correction
• High CSS DVD-Video ripping speed
• Can read 90/99min CDs
• Very quiet operation either when reading or writing
• Can overburn up to 91mins
• Can backup CDS200 and Key2Audio AudioCDs
• Supports all DVD recordable/re-writable formats
• Write/verify function for DVD-RAM media to improve reliability
• Good DVD writing quality
• Supports DVD-ROM booktype for DVD+R and DVD+R DL formats

- The Bad

• Competition offers faster DVD reading and ripping
• Average CD error correction
• Slow writing speed for DVD-RAM due to write/verify function
• Doesn't support overburning for DVD±R formats
• Doesn't support Mount Rainier
• Cannot be used to measure CD/DVD media

- Like To be fixed

• Writing quality with specific media
• Booktype support with DVD+RW media
• Option to enable/disable "write and verify" function for DVD-RAM media
• Wider media support list for 16X and 12X recording

Retail Package
Reading
Error Correction
Protected Discs
Writing
Features