Aopen DRW8800/AAN - Page 13

Conclusion

Our Aopen 8x8 package was the European retail version. The drive came bundled with software for cd/dvd writing and authoring. However we would like to see included in the package a couple of blank media.

In the CD reading tests the drive had good performance and confirmed the manufacturer's specifications. Also the seek times were at acceptable levels. As far as error correction is concerned for this type of media, we can easily say that it is not one of the strong characteristics of this drive. The performance was poor and we would like it to be better.

With DVD media, the Aopen drive was restricted to around 6x with DVD±RW media while it proved to have acceptable behavior with DVD-ROM discs. The reported seek times were high and we would like them to be much lower. As for the ripping speed we have seen better. An imprtant issue at this point is the performance of the drive with defective media, where the ABEX TDR-841 proved to be a problem for the drive while the playback with ABEX TDV-541 failed. Of course those two test discs are difficult, however other drives read them without problems.

The drive also failed in making working backups of protected games. Only one of our test games with an old version of SafeDisc protection was backed up successfully and this with the contribution of the burning software and its "Bypass EFM error" setting enabled. The ripping speed for all the games we tested was good and very good with PSX.

The drive also managed to playback and rip both of our protected Audio CDs and our 90min test disc. The 99min was not supported neither for rip nor for playback. The DAE quality score was excellent while the speed in the same test acceptable. In AudioCD reading the drive had good speed and also good seek times.

The maximum 32x recording for CD is good, while the 16x for US-RW is acceptable. The CD quality measurement tests prove that the drive is very good in this area with very good media compatibility. The jitter levels were low just as the C1 levels were while no C2 errors were reported. The performance with the AM 48X media was an exception but cannot detract from the overall writing quality of the drive.

For DVD recording the drive supports 8x for both DVD-R and DVD+R formats and 4x for RW. The recording quality here is also very good with the PI/PO levels being within the limits. The compatibility of the drive is also high with DVD media, since the drive managed to burn at 8x media certified for 4x for both formats.

Conluding we can say that this burner is appropriate for the user who wants quality recordings and doesn't care about backing up games or playing scratched media. The retail price at around $110 is good.

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