Today we will be reviewing one of the latest releases in the DVD RW market, which bears the name of NEC. In a nutshell, the NEC ND 4571A as it is labeled, supports all the well known formats including DVD-RAM media which is capable of using for both reading and writing purposes, at the speed of 5X. As expected, the rest of the media are managed by the device as most up to date drives do, with a 16X/16X on +R and -R media repsectively while the RW writing speed is at 8X and 6X for DVD±R media. DL speed is at 8X for both formats.

In addition to the above, the ND 4571A supports Labelflash, enabling the user to customize the appearance of his burned media without the need of custome printable labels and such. Note here that labelflash requires enabled media to operate while the software itself is not included in the OEM version of the drive and has to be downloaded seperately.

- Features

- Labelflash™ technology, for creative disc labelling

- General Labelflash specs

- Laser wave length 655nm
- NA 0.65
- Picture-burning time 5min (Fast mode) - 20min (High Quality mode)

General Specifications of Labelflash Disc

- Depth of the picture-burning layer 0.6mm from the disc surface
- Dye for the picture-burning layer Organic Dye
- Picture-burning area (radius) 25mm - 58mm

- Specifications

Below are the drive's main specs as given by NeroInfoTool and DVDInfoPro and VSO inspector:

- Retail package

Like the previous releases, the retail package includes:

- the white blazed NEC ND-4571A internal tray load mechanism burner
- an E-IDE (ATAPI) cable
- an Audio cable
- mounting screws
- a CD-ROM that includes documentation for the drive as well as a bundled version of Nero Express 6, Nero Vision Express 3, Nero Showtime 2.

Also, included in the retail package is the Labelflash software which enables the user to use this feature.

-The Drive

The front view of the drive is the same as always, with the logos to the far right and a led indicator and eject button... The drive comes in two colors, black and biege...

The rear panel has the usual analogue and digital outputs (SPDIF), IDE connector and power input.

We opened the drives case to take a closer look at the inner part of the drive. Upon opening the case, the drives warranty is rendered void, so we strongly advice against it. By clicking on the below image one can see a larger, more detailed version of this picture...

- Installation

The drive was installed under WindowsXP, and was recognized as "NEC DVD RW ND 4571A ". The drive came with the default firmware (1-01) installed. All reading and burning tests were made with the latest firmware installed.

For the needs of comparison in this review, we will be posting the results of the ND 4571A along with the results of the BenQ 1655 and Plextor 760A drives. Now let us move on to the next page and the reading capabilities of the drive, regaring CD and DVD media, as well as Video ripping capabilities.