COMBO DRIVE: BenQ Combo Drive CB482B

Combo drives are real value for money due to the multiple functions they perform. This combo drive from BenQ can read CDs at 48X and DVDs at 16X. CD-Rs can be written at 48X, and rewrite speeds can go up to 24X. You may be disappointed, because some combo drive models can write at 52X, nonetheless it's not a serious limitation. It has 2 MB buffer and being an internal drive, has an IDE interface. The bundle comes with 4 CDs: InterVideo WinDVD 4.0, Nero Express V5.5, one CD-R and CD-RW media. 

We tested this drive using Nero 5.5 and InCD software. We used CD-RW media that came with the drive and CD-R 52X media for our tests. To directly burn 650 MB of data from a hard drive to a CD-R media it took 2 mins and 40 secs and to copy from CD to CD it took around 3 mins. While to burn a 73 mins audio CD it took 2 mins and 42 secs and CD to CD (Audio) copying around 2 mins and 50 secs. Notably we found from the Nero Info Tool that this is a RPC1 drive, which means that you don't have to worry about the region locks while playing DVDs. As with RPC1 you can play DVDs from any part of globe without worrying about your drive getting locked to one region. 

The bottom line: All in all, the BenQ CB482B is a good buy at Rs 4,500 given its CD writing performance and more

importantly, because it's a region free drive.

Sudarshana Mishra