NU COMBI DBW-521 - Page 14

Conclusion

While NU was founded in 2003, since then the company has released many desktop and portable writers. The latest combo drive is labeled as 52XCOMBI DBW-521 and is a 4in1 device.

The user who will purchase this drive will be able to read and write cd media as well as read most known DVD formats. For those who want to get the retail version, they will find inside the package all software needed for recording. authoring and playback.

According to the specifications, the NU drive is quite a fast reading/writing device. The supported maximum writing speed for CD-R media is 52X which is the current maximum available while 16X is the supported DVD-ROM reading speed. With our tests, we tried to confirm the manufacturer's specifications and check the overall performance of the drive.

We checked the CD reading performance of the drive with different types of media. The NU Combi drive managed to read all media with fast end speeds, outrunning the 52X maximum reading speed and reporting quite acceptable seek times. We also tested NU's error correction capabilities where the drive performed quite well except for the ABEX TDR 821 test disc which reported errors, despite being the simplest of the ABEX series of test discs.

The DVD reading tests showed that the NU is a really fast DVD-ROM media reader. Just as with the CD reading tests, the drive managed to surpass the manufacturer's specifications. Fast average reading speed at 12X for single layer and 6X for dual layer, and fast access times were the characteristics of the drive. The NU is also compatible with DVD-RAM media and gave back acceptable average reading at 2X at the end of the test. The DVD error correction tests showed that the NU, while not the best solution for reading old and defective media, its overall performance during the tests was acceptable.

One of the most interesting parts during the tests was the image copy and burn process with the NU. This is of interest to those who want to buy a writer and are interested in backing up their original CD's. The image making process took more time than we expected but during the burn process, either with the EFM option of Alcohol set to ON or OFF, the drive burned successfully up to Safedisc protection scheme v2.90. That games were launched even on lesser drives.

The NU drive managed to back up most tested games but proved weak on audio protected media. Although the reported DAE ripping speed was fast, none of the protected audio media we tested was recognized.

We also burnt CD-R media to test the writing time and quality of the NU DBW-521 combo drive. We repeated the writing process many times in order to check the quality at all supported speeds and also the quality with different media manufacturers. Although the NU supports 52X maximum writing speed under CAV, the drive needed more time than the comparative LiteOn to finish the writing task at 52X with all tested media. Despite this, the quality measurements showed high C1/C2 errors especially with non TY media. This was solved when we updated the firmware to the latest version that was released a few days before.

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