The BenQ DW1655 is the latest drive released after the 1640. It is an upgrade of the 1625, released some months ago, which also featured the LS technology. We put the 1625 under the scope and found it to be a good drive, with a quite a few merits but also a few flaws. Let's sum up.

Even though CD media is not as widely used as it was in the past, it is always good to see a device with good CD support which can achieve good speeds, an area where some of the latest models fail. The DW1655 supports up to 48X reading speed with pressed media and up to 32X for HSRW media. As a DVD reading device, the drive performed admirably, reading pressed SL media with a speed up to 16X and DL media up to 12X. Write once media were read at a max speed of 16X and Re-Writable media at a max speed of 12X. Due to the high reading CD/DVD speeds and the ability to read everything we tried without a single error, we have awarded the drive five stars (for reading) in our ratings table at the end of this page.

In the Error Correction arena, results are excellent. Both the 721 and 726 test CD media produced very good scores, but it was the CD-Check test disc where we were pleased to see that the drive managed to achieve a flawless reading of 5/5 tracks.

With Protected games, the DW1655 managed to rip all inserted media, although Safedisc media was ripped extremely slowly, taking an hour and a half to complete. All audio protected media were ripped and played back successfully.

CD writing quality could be improved, since the drive produced some C2 errors with Plextools and E22, E32 with some media in the Clover Systems test. At 48X however, the drive is a good CD burner. DVD writing quality was very good, if not perfect, in many cases, with all media burned at their certified speeds, and the reported quality according to CD-Speed and Plextools Pro Q-ckeck utilities was good. With a few media, the drive reported average writing quality, some was even unreadable, (e.g. Ridisc -R 8X). However, the latest firmware revision from BenQ, which was released during our tests, corrected this. With DVD R DL as well as DVD RW media, the drive produced very good burns also.

The LightScribe mechanism of the drive performed satisfactorily, with a full print in normal mode accomplished in 26mins. The accompanying bundled software CD contains the Nero OEM suite, covers all LS needs the user might have with the click of only a few buttons.

A great PLUS for the drive, is the Q-Suite utility. An experienced end user will find the tool quite useful, while a novice user will be able to master all of its features in a short time.

Overall, a very good drive, with all the basic features and the LightScribe feature for the most demanding users. The price, at the time of the review, was at US$63 from newegg.com.

- The Good

- Fast DVD ripper
- DVD Writing quality with most media
- Performance with CD-Check Audio Test Disc
- LightScribe enabled drive
- Can overburn CD media up to 99mins
- Can perform Quality Checks
- Q-Suite utility is an advantage
- Supports overburning with both DVD+R and DVD-R media

- The Bad

- Performance with 541 test media
- Cannot create working backups of games with recent SafeDisc protection versions

- Like To be fixed

- Writing quality with specific media can be better

Reading
Error Correction
Protected Discs
Writing
Features