The Sony BWU-300S is the fastest BD burner we have tested so far at CDRinfo. The supported 8x burning speed is fast enough to offer you a complete 25GB disc in less than 14 minutes - a record that would sound unrealistic if you asked us a couple of years ago when we tested the first 2x BD burners. What we also liked with the drive is the fact that the 8x burning option is available with BD-R DL discs and that it supports read/write of the new LTH BD-R discs.

On the other hand, we should mention that the drive will burn at 8x with very few media brands/types. In fact, the only disc on the list is Panasonic's latest BD-R SL and DL for 6x. Despite our initial optimism, the drive chose the 6x speed with other 6x-certified discs by Moser Baer, TDK/Imation and Verbatim. Provided that it is still really hard for the end user to find such 6x BD-R SL and DL discs on the market today, the majority of users will see the drive burning their BD-R discs at 2x or 4x.

We would like to see some work in the firmware of the Sony drive, which could possibly allow it to achieve higher burning speeds with the widely available 2x and 4x BD-R discs. We are not sure that the Panasonic chipset that powers the drive allows this feature but this would better position the Sony drive against the competitive 8X BD burners drives powered by Renases Technology chipsets.

Other than that and regarding the reading aspect of the drive, we have to say that it turned out to be pretty good and all the CD and DVD disc were read at speeds that agree with the drive's specifications. Most reading processes were nice producing smooth graphs. Furthermore, the drive turned out to be able to read BD media at their respective burning speeds. Thus, 6X BD media can be read at the stunningly high speed of 8X, and so on. This is a very good aspect of the drive, as fast and reliable reading of the stored data is always useful, especially when you are dealing with 25GB or 50GB media. As far as error correction is concerned, we can say that the drive can handle defective media DVD pretty well. Error correction on CD media was also as good.

Next on, are the writing tests that we performed. The burning speed was very good and it met the specifications. DVD media were burned at speeds of up to 16X and CD media at 48X . Writing quality tests were performed at CD and DVD media, and the drive turned out to be average at this point. DVD+R media produced good scores, while burnings of the DVD-R produced some digital errors. Quality on the rest of the media was good.

The Sony BWU-300S left us with a good overall good impression. The drive can be used for fast backups of data on Blu-ray discs, as well as for entertainment allowing you to watch your favorite BD movies on your PC or HD screen. We hope that the writing quality with some DVDs as well as compatibility with more BD media can be easily improved through firmware updates, making it a true competitor of the other 8x BD burners out there such as the Pioneer BDR-203. The Sony BWU-300S is listed at the SonyStyle.com web site for $399, which is still a rather high price.