LiteOn LTR-24102B IDE CDR-W - Page 8

Conclusion

LiteOn's attempt at the 24x writing speed is much more than satisfactory. The LTR-24102B seems to be the faster recorder, for now, and managed to outperform both Sanyo and TDK 24x drives in many reading/writing tests. The drive's overall performance was very good and -for sure- users will enjoy both 20x and 24x writing speeds. Other important features such as: support for SD2 protected discs, overburning (up to 99min) and reading/writing SubChannel data are present. Of course nothing is perfect and the drive needs improvement at the DAE ripping speed and when reading protected CDs. Also the drive doesn't support 1X, 2X, 4X recording speeds, which maybe be wanted from some users.

LiteOn's 24x recorder also has another advantage over the competition, which can be concluded in 5 letters: "price". LiteOn's estimated retail price is 170$, which means that real price in stores will be much lower. The Sanyo and TDK 24x recorders (retail packages only) can be found at 170$+ and 200$+ and the announced PleXWriter PX-W2410A is expected to cost around 200$+. Of course we haven't, yet, tested Plextor's 24x drive but LiteOn 24x has -for sure- an advantage in the price tag.

The LiteOn LTR-24102B is expected to hit the market in the second half of August 2001 worldwide and for sure will be a sales hit for LiteOn. The only question that has been un-answered is.."Can the LiteOn LTR-24102B dominate the 24x writing speed?" We cannot answer that question yet since Plextor's 24x recorder is un-tested but pretty soon we will know... Stay tuned ;-)