It's been some time now since we tested the world's first 18X burner from Plextor and now again we had the opportunity to put another 18X burner through its paces, the SH-S182D from Samsung. The drive supports the high DVD±R DL writing speed of 8X and the newest 12X DVD-RAM media.

At 48X reading speed with CD media in comparison to other drives, we found the SH-S182D a good reader, probably the fastest out there, with a more than capable CD error correction mechanism. The drive supports reading of 90/99min media, while it can also overburn CD media up to 101mins. DVD reading speeds were good, but we would like to see faster speeds with DL media. A higher ripping speed with DVD-Video CSS would also be welcomed. Best of all, its DVD error correction was excellent and none of the inserted media were a problem for the SH-S182D.

Unfortunately, nothing has changed with the protected Audio media, and the Samsung drives are still unable to bypass the CDS200 protection. The good news is that the drive is still capable of creating working backups of games with Safedisc protection up to v3.1. Note that not many drives out there are able to bypass this protection scheme.

In CD writing quality, the drive did not manage to produce good quality CD burns, with the exception of Taiyo Yuden and BenQ media, which according to Plextools, appear to be in good condition. However, the CDX Clover Systems test had a different opinion and marked all media as unacceptable.

DVD writing quality remains the same as with previous release models from Samsung, with the drive preferring DVD+R media and producing some good quality burns, even at 18X speed. Things weren't quite as good with DVD-R media and most of the tested media had bad quality according to Plextools and unsteady speed graphs with CDSpeed. This was more or less confirmed by the Almedio AEC-1000 error checker. With RW media, the reported quality was barely average, while DL quality could have been better.

When it comes to BookType, the drive has by default the BookType set to Automatic and switches all +R media to DVD-ROM. We used the CDSpeed tool in order to change the booktype and didn't face any problems, even with the +RW media, which with the previous Samsung models, the booktype setting change was not recognized and could have been set to DVD-ROM only if the DVD+RW disc was brand new.

- The Good

• Supports 18X DVD±R
• Supports 8X DVD±R DL
• Very good CD/DVD error correction
• Can read & write DVD-RAM media at 12X
  
• Can completely read 90/99min Audio CD's
• Can overburn CD media up to 101mins
• Writing quality with DVD+R media
• Can create working backups of Safedisc v3.1x

- The Bad

• Writing quality with DVD-R media
• Doesn't fully support all audio protected discs
• Cannot create working backups with Safedisc protected games over v4.6x
• Cannot overburn DVD recordable media

- Like To be fixed

• Writing quality for CD-R, DVD-R , DVD±RW, DVD±R DL media
• More media compatibility through firmware release

Reading
Error Correction
Protected Discs
Writing
Features