BenQ DW1620A

Review Pages

BenQ DW1620A DL Recorder - Page 11

DVD Recording Tests

- Writing Performance

The BenQ DW1620A supports 16X DVD±R and DVD+R DL writing. BenQ DW1600A users can upgrade their drives to the DW1620A with a simple firmware upgrade. BenQ will not continue supporting the DW1600A in terms of firmware upgrades, since all improvements will be included in the DW1620A firmware. It's highly suggested to upgrade your drives to the DW1620A even if you don't burn DVD-R media!

The maximum supported speed for DVD±R is 16X (6X~16X CAV), 4X CLV for DVD±RW and 2.4X for DVD+R DL media. The current competition offers the same DVD±R writing speeds but higher DVD+R DL writing speeds (Pioneer DVR-108A and NEC 3500A).

Nero Burning Rom reported speeds are shown below.

The drive burns CLV at 2.4X and 4X, P-CAV at 8X/12X and CAV at 16X. With DVD-R/RW media, 1X/2X writing speeds are not supported, meaning older 1X/2X rated DVD-RW media won't burn at all. BenQ has found that 8X DVD+R media can over-speed up to 12X and even 16X with good burning quality. Firmware upgrades improve the compatibility list, meaning more media would be supported and burning quality improved.

By using Nero CD-DVD Speed's "create disc" function, we are able to see the 8X, 12X and 16X recording technology being used by the DW1620A DL recorder. For the following graphs, we used Philips 16X DVD+R media.

8X DVD+R Single Layer writing

The drive completed successful DVD writing at 8X in 8:33mins. It started writing at 5.03X, reached a maximum writing speed of 8.09X and clocked in an average speed of 7.70X.

12X DVD+R Single Layer writing

The drive completed successful DVD writing at 12X in 6:27min. Starting at 5.12X, it reached a maximum writing speed of 12.27X and reported an average speed of 10.40X.

16X DVD+R Single Layer writing

The drive completed successful DVD writing at 16X in 5:50mins. It started to writing at 4.46X, reached a maximum writing speed of 15.99X and reported an average speed of 11.52X.

Below is a table with several 12X and 16X recorders, reporting the average writing speed as measured by Nero CDDVDSpeed, showing that the BenQ DW1620A is the fastest 16X recorder:

Drive	Writing Strategy	Writing Speed	Average Writing Speed
Plextor PX-712A	P-CAV	12X	10.62X
LG GSA-4120B	Z-CLV	12X	9.87X
BenQ DW1620A	CAV	16X	11.52X
ASUS DRW-1604P	Z-CLV	16X	10.11X
Pioneer DVR-108A	Z-CLV	16X	10.03X

- Supported media list/Burning Tests

We burned 4315MB of data on various DVD±R, DVD±RW media. We used the maximum allowed writing speed for each disc. With current firmware (vB7H9) not many media are supported at 16X, especially for the DVD-R format. Future firmware releases are expected to support more media at 12X/16X for both DVD±R formats.

- Writing Time Results

DVD-R media

The lowest recording times came with BenQ's 16X DVD-R media with 6:01mins. Even the TY 8X -R media which is supposed to reach 16X, had a final recording time of 10:18 indicating a drop in writing speed.
Maxell 8X -R was burned at 12X with a time of 6:18mins. TDK 8X -R is allowed to burn at 12X, however the final recording time of 15:18, shows the media was burned at 4X instead of 12X.
Most 8X -R rated media was burned at 8X. The lowest recording time in this category came with LeadDataS03 at 8:04. What's rather interesting is that two FujiFilm03 media were burned at 4X (real recording speed), while the one which burned at 8X is un-mountable. BenQ should fix this problem...
Most 4X -R rated media were burned at 4X. Two burned discs weren't possible to mount while, with Princo 4X -R media, we had a coaster. Finally, the 3A 8X-R didn't burn at all and Nero reported write errors during the lead-in area.
With 4X DVD-RW media, the burn process completed without any problems. However, the 811S couldn't mount the discs, while the Plextor PX-712A and LiteON SOHD-167T didn't have any problems. We don't know if the problem came from the 811S or the DW1620A drive....

According to BenQ, there's one more media supported at 16X, SONY's 8X -R, which we didn't test:

Several Nero screenshots are placed below:

3A 8X -R Burning Error

BenQ 16X -R writing...

Maxell 8X -R at 12X writing...

DVD+R media

The DW1620A performed very well, as was expected with +R and +RW media. The drive with PhilipsC16 media hit a speed record of 5:42mins for our DVD burning project, which is the fastest we've ever had.
At the 16X speed, many 8X +R media are supported, from TDK/TraxData/TY and BenQ. However the burning result from BenQ 8X +R, showed that the actual burn was made at 12X and not 16X.
At 12X, the burning time was very good with 6:15mins being the lowest recording time. It's noticable that TY 4X +R media was allowed to burn up to 12X!
At 8X, the burning times are more or less the same. The only media we found that could overspeed was Verbatim 4X +R media, at 8X, while most 4X +R rated media will burned only at 4X.
All used DVD+RW media was burned at 4X with very good recording times.

The following table illustrates more supported media for 16X speed, most of them haven't yet been released to the public ;-)

Below are two Nero screenshots from BenQ DW1620A:

BenQ 8X +R at 16X!

And the lowest ever recording time with Philips 16X +R media!

- Comparison with other drives

The BenQ DW1620a is the fastest writer at 16X for both ±R formats as the test results showed. The ASUS and Pioneer drives cannot compete, due to their Z-CLV implementation.

With DVD re-writable media, the Pioneer and ASUS burners are faster with -RW media but slower with +RW.

- DVD Overburning Test

Using Nero CD-DVD Speed, we tested if the BenQ DW1620A DL can overburn using DVD±R media. Unfortunately, the drive does not support overburning with DVD±R media.

- DVD+MRW Tests

The drive doesn't support the Mount Rainier feature.