Lite-ON LXR-24101A external CD-RW - Page 10

Conclusion

Lite-On LXR-24101A is a fast CD-R reader with low access times and ability to handle all the CD protections. The drive also supports CD-Text for audio CDs and 90/99min audio CDs ripping. In the writing part, Lite-On LXR-24101A finished the HS-RW test really fast and also supports overburning up to 90 minutes.

The main weakness of the drive is the very high recording times. We burned many different brands of CD-R media and the results did not confirm the 24x or the other supported recording speeds. Possibly this low performance could be improved with an adjustment of the adopted "Smart-Burn" technology. During some different writing tests, we saw that the drive reached the maximum recording speed late or even kept writing the whole CD in a low speed.

Also, we were surprised that the drive did not manage finish the audio CD DAE tests in a high average speed. The DAE speed was almost the half the specifications state. In the protected audio CDs ripping test, the drive refused to finish the tasks and the test PC "froze" in many cases.

We also consider as negatives for the drive the delicate structure of the top-opened tray and the noisy operation. In some cases, the eject button was not the solution for ejecting a fast spinning inserted CD and we had to unplug the power cord of the drive or restart the test PC in order to continue our tests.

Lite-On LXR-24101A is an ambitious proposal for an external 24/10/40 drive. However, the overall picture of the drive's performance is not the expected and we cannot say that the drive is ready for a straight comparison with other 24x recorders. The early firmware version installed gives us the chance to expect a better performance with future upgrades.