Apart from being able to burn DVD media at high speeds, Pioneer DVR-116D is bundled with the new Optimal Write Speed technology, that aims to ensure top burning quality with a cost on speed. Let's take on overview on the results of the tests that we performed.

First of all, the drive proved to be a good reader, attaining the reading speeds outlined in the specifications with all media. Error correction mechanisms on the other hand, are mediocre, especially with CD media. With DVDs, the drive managed to read the artificially defected test discs, expect from the scratched dual-layer DVD.

Moving on to the burning tasks, the drive many times failed to reach the designated speed , and showed some major speed drops. These may have also affected the burning quality, as there were some error rate peaks at the point of the drop-downs. In general, burning quality was good and most of the times tests on the burned discs reported no uncorrectable errors.

The Optimal Write Speed technology also turned out to be helpful, as sometimes, when the drive failed to make good burns on its own, the OWS enabled burn was of high quality. This was something that we expected, though, as lower burning speeds usually lead to better burns. The utility could prove useful to the mainstream users who need a quick and easy answer on which recording speed is the appropriate for their discs.

The 20x burning speed had been considered as extremely high some time ago. Today, ODD makers try to make it a mainstream, even of their drives use this burning speed with limited amount of media. The Pioneer drive follows a more quality-conscious approach and chooses to resume burning tasks in lower speed as soon as it detects that the inserted disc is cannot handle the selected speed. This strategy is welcomed in most cases. However, if you like speedy burnings, you may consider it as negative behavior.

The DVR-116D has potential to hit the top as soon as some improvements are made.