BenQ DW830A DL Recorder - page 3

- Tested Kit

We received an evaluation kit from BenQ, in order to demonstrate the Dual Layer recording procedure. The tested drive is a working engineering sample with S/N 6 and firmware revision B4A8. The drive was recognized under Windows as "BENQ DVD DL DW830A".

The heart of the drive is the well-known Philips PNX7850 chipset, also met in the DW800A and DW822A DVD burners.

Below is the screenshot from Nero Info Tool, reporting the drive's capabilities (notice DVD+R DL is checked),

,while below are the features according to DVDInfoPro:

BenQ provided only one (1) piece of DVD+R9 DL media for our tests. The specifications of this disc are available below:

The media was manufactured from Mitsubishi Chemicals as the ID code shows. Fortunately for our tests we managed to find more blank DVD+R9 media so we had the chance to record both DVD-Video and Data content for these tests. The DVD+R DL disc doesn't seem to have any visual differences (dye color) compared with normal DVD+R media.

Using Nero CD-DVD Speed we can check the writing speed (2.4X CLV):

(picture: courtesy of BenQ)

As the Nero CD-DVD Speed shows, the drive starts writing at 2.19X, ends at 2.39X, giving an average of 2.33X. During our writing tests we saw the actual writing speed dropping for one second, controlled by the WOPC II (Walking Optimal Power Control) function.