NEC ND-3520A Burner - Page 26

Conclusion

NEC is known to always manufacture good quality burners, and the NEC ND-3520A continues this tradition. NEC introduced at the end of December 2004, their second generation 16X DVD burner, offering higher DVD+RW and DVD-RW speed and DVD-R double layer upgradability. All these are possible because of the new NEC D6364 chipset, making it impossible to update all previous NEC ND-3500A models to ND-3520A. However, nothing is changed from the look of the drive, since NEC uses the same casing as the ND-3500A model.

When this drive was used as a reader, it reported very good DVD-R, DVD+R and CD reading speeds, but DVD-Video ripping is reduced because of the "rip-lock" that is introduced to ensure safe reading. The drive has high DVD error correction capabilities, since all problematic test media could be read with no problem, and DVD error correction could reproduce missing blocks. On the other hand, CD error correction could be further improved. Like the ND-3500A model, DAE speed was considerably low (32X), and it cannot make SafeDisc 2.60+ backups, due to the NEC chipsets used and cannot recognize 99mins discs.

The drive can burn CD-R media up to 48X, but we observed that some media (even high grade media) could only be burned at 32X. This increases writing quality, but greatly reduces speed performance. The ND-3520A can burn DVD-R and DVD+R media up to 16X. As expected, NEC continues to retain its high quality standards, even at 16X writing speed. Overspeed burning is introduced when possible to increase writing speed. DVD+RW writing speed is increased to 8X, and DVD-RW writing speed to 6X. Writing quality was very good at these speeds.

The drive can burn DVD+R9 media, and a firmware update will be available in the future to support DVD-R double layer writing. However, only Verbatim media could be burned at 4X, and all other double layer media could be burned at 2.4X. Again, writing quality was very good. The Booktype setting can be changed by the user, but only for double layer media. The default booktype setting for double layer media is DVD-ROM.

The drive costs only about US$75.00 and its price makes it a very attractive buy, considering the writing quality that you get at this price!

You can always read users' opinions and share your thoughts for this burner in our forum section.

- The Good

• Can burn DVD+RW media at 8X, and DVD-RW media at 6X
• DVD-R double layer upgradability
• Very good DVD error correction capabilities
• Supports CD-Text (reading/writing)
• Supports audio protected discs
• Very good Single Layer DVD writing quality
• High C2% accuracy
• Fast recording with Double Layer media
• Very good writing quality with Double Layer media
• Can overburn up to 89min CDs

- The Bad

• Poor CD error correction
• Slow ripping CSS DVD-Video performance
• DAE speed only up to 32X
• Mount Rainier is not supported
• Cannot recognize 99min Audio CD's
• Cannot create working backups with SafeDisc protected games over v2.60
• Cannot overburn DVD recordable media
• Can only burn Verbatim double layer media at 4X

- Like To be fixed

• Official firmware release to support booktype setting for +R/+RW media
• Official firmware release to increase double layer writing speed for certain media
• Better writing quality with 48X CD-R media
• Higher DVD-Video ripping speed

Retail Package
Reading
Error Correction
Protected Discs
Writing
Features