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Follow UsThis drive supports 16X DVD write and read, and 4X DVD+RW. CD-writing capabilities are also the same, with 40X
CD-R and read, and 24X CD-RW. Plus, it supports 2.4X double layer DVD R writing, which allows you to store up to 8.5 GB of data. The BenQ DW1600 comes bundled with BenQ Software Disc, 4.7 GB DVD+R media, InterVideo for video playback/capture and Sonic for creating music and data discs. Like the nu drive, this is also an IDE drive with 2 MB cache buffer. The test bed and parameters were identical to the nu drive. The burn speeds were also very comparable to the nu drive, except for audio CD-CD copy, which was a little slower. The same goes for the DVD+R tests. The burst copy of 530 MB data on CD and 2.53 MB data on DVD can conveniently be placed on a similar scale. The Nero
CD-DVD speed tests yielded almost identical results except that this one's CPU utilization was lower.
The Bottom Line: More expensive than the nu drive but less taxing on the CPU. Plus, it offers a 2 yr warranty.
| Test/Model | nu | BenQ | nu | BenQ | nu | BenQ | nu | BenQ | nu | BenQ |
| CD R/DVD R burn speeds (min:sec) |
CD (650 MB) |
DVD+R (4.33 GB) |
DVD-R (4.33 GB) |
DVD+RW | DVD-RW | |||||
| Data copy |
3:17 | 3:25 | 8:34 | -- | 9:24 | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| CD-CD Copy (data) |
4:25 | 4:25 | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| 73 min Audio copy |
3:19 | 3:23 | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| CD-CD copy (audio) |
6:08 | 8:16 | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| Time to create 650 MB ISO Image |
6:22 | 6:25 | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA | NA |
| ReWritable media tests |
CD | DVD+R | DVD-R | DVD+RW | DVD-RW | |||||
| Time to format (sec) |
20 | 35 | NA | NA | NA | NA | 9 | 10 | 9 | 9 |
| Max capacity |
530 MB | 530 MB | NA | NA | NA | NA | 2.3 GB | 2.53 GB | 2.3 GB | 2.53GB |
| Data transfer time (min:sec) |
10:21 | 8:20 | NA | NA | NA | NA | 20:11 | 21:13 | 18:27 | 21:56 |
| Other CD/DVD tests |
CD (643 MB) |
CD (73 mins Audio) |
DVD (4.33 GB) |
DVD+R/RW | DVD-R/RW | |||||
| average transfer rate (x) |
30 | 30 | 30 | 30 | 12 | NA | 6 | 6 | 6 | 6 |
| total seek time (ms) |
192 | 176 | 159 | 163 | 172 | NA | 172 | 173 | 172 | 170 |
| CPU utilization in % |
7 | 8 | 11 | 8 | 90 | NA | 80 | 47 | 80 | 52 |
| Media recognition time (secs) |
5 | 5 | 7 | 6 | 6 | NA | 11 | 8 | 11 | 11 |
Sudarshana Mishra