ASUS DRW-0804P	Pioneer DVR-105	LG GMA-4020B

    Here is where the results start to differ.  The CD Writing of the three drives varies from 12X to 22.45X.  The LG drive is a 12X CLV drive, with the speed staying at 12X throughout the disk.  The Pioneer is identical but its at 16X instead of 12X.  The ASUS drive is a Zone-CLV drive as we can see from the test it speeds up at the 10 minute and 20 minute marks, to its maximum of 24X, while starting at 16X like the Pioneer drive.  With CD writing we see that the LG and Pioneer drives are identical in speed, burning at 8X on our 10X disk.  The ASUS went to its full 24X speed early on, at about the 20 minutes, after starting the burn at 16X much like with CD-R's.  Now lets look at the reason for buying this drive, DVD performance.

DVD Reading & Writing

    DVD writing is the main growth area currently in the optical drive area currently.  Reading should be pretty close for all three drives, but the writing speed is what is the major marketing difference between drives.  Lets see how the three drives compare.

ASUS DRW-0804P	Pioneer DVR-105	LG GMA-4020B

    The reading results are certainly quite interesting.  With pressed data DVD's such as those found in game DVD's or Encyclopedia's, we see that the ASUS and Pioneer drives take the lead, with averages near 9.5X speeds while the LG seems to top off at 8X speeds.  Moving to video DVD's we see that there are two different reading styles, ASUS and LG use the standard CAV reading style while the Pioneer uses CLV of 2X throughout the disk.  Next is the burned disks, with DVD-R we see the LG and ASUS have an average speed of just over 6X while the Pioneer is about 1.5X slower which is odd when you look at the other results.  DVD+R, which only one of our burners can write, can be read by all three drives.  The ASUS is the fastest at reading the disk coming 0.4X faster than the oldest drive the LG one.  The Pioneer provides a similar result as with the DVD-R disk, about 1+X slower than the other drives.  However the drives can read at an adequate speed so lets look at their writing speed.

Conclusion

    The drive ASUS has made seems to have it all, but lets recap what we have seen about this drive.

    First the packaging of the drive.  The package itself is pretty standard fair, with nothing leaping out at you apart from the 8X8 logo on the front.  The packaging on the inside is much nicer, with ASUS thinking of most things you might need, including an emergency eject pin.  The software is one of the best, in Ahead's Nero Express 6.  It would have been nice to see the full version of Nero, but I can see that it is a cost cutting measure, where you don't loose too much.  The drive is your standard looking CD drive.  The fact that ASUS didn't include any disks at all is rather annoying, as 8X disks are still somewhat rare in many places still.

    Performance is where ASUS has put a lot of effort into the drive, and it shows up in the results.  The ASUS drive took the lead in most categories, from CD reading to DVD writing.  In the CD arena it is moderately faster than most of the other drives with its biggest improvement being in the CD Writing and ReWriting performance.  DVD writing is where the ASUS excels with it being basically twice as fast as the other drives, albeit those are based on the previous generation or older.  The only thing I will say is that you should update the firmware to the latest you can for this drive as it can give you better compatibility with burning DVD's.

    Price is always an issue with any device, and many DVD burners these days have dropped quite a bit from what they were.  The price of the ASUS drive is around , which puts it slightly above a similar drive from Pioneer.  If it came with a disk it would be worth it.

Good Points

• 8X DVD-/+ R drive
• 4X DVD-/+ RW drive
• Nero 6
• Fast overall drive

Bad Points

• Nero Express
• No included disks
• Plain packaging

Final Words

    Overall this is a fast drive that performs exactly like you would hope, and includes Nero Express.  While the price is slightly higher than other comparable drives, and disks are still somewhat rare at its speed, it is still one of the fastest drives.

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