Toshiba SD-R5372

Review Pages

The 5372 drive is a good CD/DVD reader, however a higher CD-RW and DVD-ROM DL reading speed would be welcomed. The reading speed for recordable media is more than adequate and support for reading DVD-RAM is certainly an advantage. Error correction with both CD and DVD media is good and especially with CD media where the drive is one of the best from the latest line of drives that have hit the market recently.

Ripping speeds with all the protected games we tried was rather good. On the other hand, when it comes to creating backups of SafeDisc protected games, only versions up to 2.51 will work.

According to our DAE tests, the drive cannot read Leadin or Leadout data while it also failed to read our 90/99min test discs and Key2Audio protection was also a problem for the Toshiba drive. It managed a score of 100 in the Advanced DAE quality test.

The supported 48X CD writing speed was confirmed with a time of 2:47min for an 80min data compilation but the writing quality at such a high speed is not the best you can have. Our Clover Systems Tests reported E32 errors with all tested CD media. The SD-5372 can also overburn up to 95min.

The reported DVD recording times were good but the supported media list could be larger for 12X and 16X media. The writng quality was good, but further improvements would be welcome, especially with specific media. With the latest firmware revision, we managed to successfully burn DL media, although at 5X there are still some questions.

The price is quite low at around US$60.

- The Good