DSW1812P

Typical of most of the DVD burners currently available on the market, the DSW1812P has an ATAPI/IDE interface and a buffer size of 2MB. AOpen also claims the use of silent technology thanks to an auto balance system (ABS) and a noise-control system (NCS); we did note that this is a whisper quiet DVD burner, with no apparent vibration while the drive was spinning, although we did notice some vibration when it was burning to CD. For testing consistency, the DSW1812P was installed in a Thermaltake Shark case which has drive rails that hold the drive securely in place.

The DSW1812P can burn and read most of the standard DVD and CD formats, but although it performed admirably in most tests, we experienced consistent problems writing to DVD-R DL (dual layer) discs. We discovered errors on two of our test discs and repeated attempts to read back burnt DVD-R DL discs in the AOpen drive and in other drives weren't successful.

Despite the issue with DVD-R DL discs, the DSW1812P handles DVD+R DL without any problems. As usual, we filled our Verbatim discs with 8GB of music and video files. The DSW1812P writes these discs at a speed of 8x, and this took almost 18 minutes to complete using the supplied Nero 7 Essentials software - a fairly speedy result.

The DSW1812P also handles single-layer DVD-R and DVD+R discs without any fuss. We used 4GB worth of video and music files for the single-layer tests, with a mere two second difference in write times at 16x (5mins 42sec and 5min 40sec respectively). Similarly, read times were just seven seconds apart at 4mins 41sec and 4min 48sec respectively. These write and read times are quite fast compared to other drives we have seen, such as the ASUS DRW-1612BL. Playing back the burnt data in Nero's CD-DVD speed showed a smooth read curve, with all burnt discs read back perfectly on other PCs.

Overall, the speedy DSW1812P performed well with very good write times and solid read times for most discs - although keep in mind that it doesn't handle DVD-R DL discs very well.