24x CD-RW Combo Roundup Vol.1- Page 15

Conclusion

Portability and high performance are the main characteristics of both Asus and LiteOn drives. Having nothing to hide, the drives performed adequately in most of the benchmarks, and confirmed their official specifications.

Asus has paid attention to the retail package and the drive's design, while LiteOn preferred keeping a more spartiatic attitude, without, however, neglecting the performance factor. Asus SCB-2408 comes in a complete retail package with many accessories and documentation, while the LiteOn LSC-24081MX box contains only the essential parts for operation.

The small dimensions and the low weight of the drives make them a very handy solution when attached to your notebook or your PC. In addition, Asus offers a dual USB and IEEE 1394 connection interface, while LiteOn chose to support only the USB 2.0, mainly focusing to lower cost. As a note, in the LiteOn's design we might say that the response of the eject button could be better.

The LiteOn LSC-24081MX supports the 24x Z-CLV maximum recording speed for the CD-R format. Our tests showed that the current implementation of the Z-CLV technology does not allow the drive to achieve the lowest writing times among the 24x category drives, including Asus SCB-2408. However, the writing stability for both drives is very good and no writing problems occurred while writing on various media. In addition, both the Jitter measurements on the recorded media showed a high writing quality.

In the reading part, the drives are fast and the reading speeds reached the maximum supported 24x, on both pressed and CD-R media. The Asus drive gave slightly increased seek times on DVD-ROM media, while the LiteOn could be improved in this area when using CD-R discs. The entire available DVD recordable / rewritable formats (except DVD-RAM) were read fast, including the DVD-Video discs.

A very impressive performance of both drives is on the error correction tests with CD-R and DVD media. In the case of ripping scratched audio discs, both drives corrected / concealed most of the reading errors, resulting to high scores in the corresponding tests. Please note, that the Asus drive does not retrieve C2 error information 100% accurately, allowing the LiteOn drive to be a better solution for tasks based on retrieving C2 information. DVD-ROM reading was fast and accurate in the case of not only normal but even on defected discs.

The maximum supported DAE speed is 24x for both drives. The audio protected discs are not supported by the drives, since the LiteOn cannot recognize them and the Asus can only handle the Key2Audio discs.

Another strong feature of both drives is their ability to create working backups of the latest SafeDisc v.2 protected titles.

If price is a basic factor for choosing one of the tested drives, then we should mention that the LiteOn is a more affordable proposal and is available at a price rated approximately 130-140 Euros. The complete retail package, as well as the dual interface support of the Asus drive, increases its retail price. It is available at about 180 - 200 Euros. For different reasons, each drive deserves our credits.