These sport the IDE interface, and connect to the PC using an IDE cable. They are more popular than their external counterparts because of their considerably lower prices and due to them being faster because, well, the interface is faster. Other than this, there isn't much of a difference between an internal and an external drive. Regular home and office PC users and office PC users generally opt for internal drives.
We tested twelve internal DVD Writers in this shootout. These were the Asus DRW1608P2S. BenQ DW1640 and DW1625, Gigabyte GO 1623A RH, LG GSA 4167B, Lite On SHW1635S, Super AIIWrite SHM
165P6S and LightScribe
SHW 16H5S, Plextor PX 716A and PX 740A, Samsung SH W162, and the Sony DRU 810A.
Features
Read and write speeds
The read speeds of all the drives were almost identical, with CDROM read speeds of 40x and 48x, and DVD ROM read speeds of 16x. 16x is pretty good; whether you're watching DVD movies or copying files, none of these drives should pose a speed problem.
Similarly, write speeds were almost identical across the brands. The BenQ DW1625 seemed to be left behind, partly because this is one of the older models. It supported writing to DVD Rat a maximum speed of 8x, as against the 16x supported by the rest of the writers. In fact neither of the BenQ models can be called new; they've been around for a while. Th at's also the reason why neither of them supports the DVD R DL standard.
Multi drives
There were three multi drives in this test: the Asus DRW 1608P2S, Lite On Super AIIWrite SHM165P6S, and the LG GSA 4167B. A multi drive supports reading from and writing to all existing DVD formats, including DVDRAM. The ability to write to DVD
RAM drives makes these drives a very useful tool for those who require video capture and video editing. DVD RAMs are also espedally good for backups, since you can make incremental backups. (Incremental backups are those that only incorporate changes since the last backup.)
CD burning
Almost all the drives supported writing to CD R at 48x. The Asus supported only 40x for CD R, but strangely, it supported 32x for CD RW, which is the UltraSpeed standard. Some vendors adver
tise their products as supporting the UltraSpeed standard; the HighSpeed standard is 24x for CD RW.
LightScribe
The LightScribe technology has been around for quite a few months, but drives supporting this standard are just appearing in the Indian market. The Lite On SHW 16H5S and the BenQ DW1625 were the only drives that supported LightScribe. As you might know, LightScribe is a technology that allows you to etch CD or DVD labels on compatible media using the drive's laser. This is an exciting technology, and with plummeting drive and media prices, it's bound to soon catch people's fancy.
Form Factors
Most of the drives featured the half height form factor. Halfheight drives have a much lower depth than do traditional drives, and can fit in almost any cabinet, leaving space for better air ventilation. Such drives also tend to interfere less with other PC components such as the motherboard, memory, and cables.
Cables And Manuals
The Asus, Samsung and Sony were the only drives that shipped with data cables. With the other drives, you'll need to purchase the cable separately. Only the Sony drive came with a printed manual, whereas the others came with just quick start guides. Of course, you can always download the manual from the manufacturer's Web site, but a printed manual is always preferable!
Bundled Media
Most of the drive manufacturers decided not to bundle blank media with the drives. Surprisingly, the Lite On drives, the lowest priced ones, came with blank media. The BenQ DW1625 and the lite On Super AIIWrite even shipped with a LightScribe CD!
Bundled Software
The Asus DRW 1608P2S came with Ulead DVD MovieFactory 4 Disc Creator, a very good video creating and editing software.
The Plextor PX 716A, which comes under the Premium range, came with the famed PlexTools Professional, which allow you to tweak the drive's features such as maximum read and write speeds to suit your needs. It also featured GigaReca technology that allows you to write up to 1 GB of data to CD.
Performance
Speeds And ACcess Times
In the Nero CD DVD Speed Test, the Plextor PX 740A logged the highest read speeds for a DVD at an average speed of 12x. The highest burst speed was logged by the other Plextor, the PX 716A, at 42 MBps. Copying data from these drives will be faster than from other drives.
In the SiSoft Sandra test, once again, the Plextor PX 740A logged the highest score in the data transfer test. The Lite On LightScribe SHW 16H5S logged the lowest access time, which means it is the fastest in accessing data on the media. A fast access time means you can search faster on a CD or DVD, and navigate videos with better responsiveness.
Audio CDs
Audio CD ripping times were more or less the same across the drives, except that the Samsung and the Plextor PX 716A proved
to be much slower. We repeated the tests several times and got the same results every time. For reasons unknown, the Plextor, which is otherwise a fast reader, is somewhat slow when it comes to reading audio CDs.
DVD Ripping
In these tests, too, the Plextor PX716A lagged behind the others, being slower by a factor of two. The LG drive was also almost as slow as the Plextor in ripping DVD movies. If DVD ripping is slow on a drive, DVD playback is bound to suffer.
CD R Writing
The Plextor PX 716A was slow in some cases, fast in others for example, in the CD R writing test, it was the fastest. The Gigabyte GO W1623A, which is supposed to be able to write at 48x, could write only at 16xand hence logged the lowest scores. However, when we tried writing to another brand of media, the problem disappeared, and it was able to write at 48x. This points to a compatibility issue.
DVD R Writing
The LG was the fastest here, followed closely by the Asus. There was not much variation in the writing speeds of the rest of the drives, with the exception of the BenQ DW1640, which took almost twice the time to finish writing the assorted DVD R.
DVD+R Writing
We found that both the Asus and the Plextor PX 716A could write at 12x to the 8x DVD+R media we had, and they did so without a flaw! This is possible because
of the drive's over speed burning capabilities, meaning it can write to media at speeds faster
than the media's rated speed.
The Plextor was the faster of the two. The fact that these drives offer over speed writing out of the box for DVD+R, without producing coasters, is a feat in itself.
In Conclusion
Features and performance have been taken into account earlier on in the tests, but the price factor decided the winner.
The Lite On LightScribe SHW16H5S was unique, with its LightScribe capability. It came with a LightScribe CD along with blank DVD+R and DVD R media. Its performance was also better than that of most drives, and it is priced at Rs 3,975 which is very good for a LightScribe drive. We therefore awarded the Lite on LightScribe SHW 16HSS the Digit Best Buy Silver.
The Lite On Super AIIWrite SHM 165P6S is a multi drive. It is capable of writing to dual layer media at 8x, which is the fastest in its class. It came with blank DVDs and a silver as well as a black bezel so you can change the bezel to match the colour of your PC's cabinet. To top it all, it was the best performer, and is priced at Rs 3,085, which is dirt cheap for a multi drive with top notch performance. The Lite On Super AllWrite SHM 165P6S therefore gets a well deserved Digit Best Buy Gold.
