This review is quite a landmark. It is CDRinfo's first review with the DaTARIUS system and marks the start of a very fruitful collaboration between two companies that are at the top of their respective fields. At the same time, the drive reviewed here, the Optiarc AD 7170A, is the first to come from what should also prove a very fruitful collaboration between 2 of the giants in the optical drive industry, Sony and NEC.

Certainly, the DaTARIUS DVD Analyzer R 2x provides us with more detail than we have ever had in the past. It was interesting to see the results from CD Speed which in quite a few cases indicated much better results than the DaTARIUS system produced for several discs. But it should be remembered that the CD Speed tests were carried out with the Optiarc drive, so it is to be expected that the drive would be capable of reading its own burns.

Despite this, there were a couple of discs that produced read errors with CD Speed, namely Prodisc 16x DVD-R PRODISC S05 burned at 16x, and Ricoh 16x DVD+R RICOJPN R03 burned at 16x. All other discs produced either perfect or near perfect CD Speed graphs.

If we want a more objective picture regarding quality though, one that will more closely resemble what other drives, including desktop players will see, then we need to look at the DaTARIUS results. And here we find that the best media for this drive are:

• TTH01 DVD-R TTH01 burned at16x
• Optodisc 8x DVD-R OPTODICSR008 burned at 8x
• CMC Magnetics 8x DVD-R CMC MAG AE1 burned at 8x
• Verbatim 16x DVD+R MCC 004 burned at 18x
• Ridisc 8x DVD+R CMC MAG E01 burned at 8x

There were several good burns that unfortunately produced some POF errors. They include Datasafe 16x DVD-R TTH02 burned at18x, Datawrite Mach4 8x DVD-R INFODISC-R20 burned at 8x, Plextor 16x DVD+R YUDEN000 T03 burned at 18x, and Datawrite Titanium 8x DVD+R PRODISC R03 burned at12x.

In the main, we saw good quality burns, and 18x burning was surprisingly good.

The drive supports 16x max DVD reading speed, 18x max SL DVD and 8x max DL DVD writing speeds, as well as 12x max DVD RAM writing speed. It appears to be a good burner and reflects the quality of both Sony and NEC.

Prices around the internet have the drive at £26.01(Inc.VAT) and US$37.