BenQ DW1620: An Elegant, Robust DVDR Surprise
 

In Taipei a few months ago, we had a glimpse at BenQ's entire DVDR lineup for the rest of the year. Anxious to see working samples then, it seems as though lack of media continued to plague BenQ, Pioneer, LiteOn and NEC. 16X media is still difficult to find, but Verbatim and Ritek have some media for sale in the US already.

We have been working on a large 16X DVDR roundup for weeks with burners from Pioneer, Sony, NEC, BenQ and Toshiba, and we plan to reveal our entire findings on the publishing date of the roundups. However, after testing BenQ's newest 16X drive, we thought that we should give everyone a sneak peak at our findings on the unit. This drive review was literally a story of rags to riches. When we first received the unit, we could not get a single media to burn at 16X, and even then, some discs had problems at 8X. Fortunately, we had a lot of opportunity to work with BenQ and had them send us their newest firmware a little ahead of time. Then, the drive completely changed in our favor.

We do not consider it fair to review a drive if we are the only ones who have the firmware, so feel free to obtain a copy of it here. Although, be warned that this was the copy received from BenQ, so we do not support it in any way, shape or form. Enjoy!

http://www.anandtech.com/storage/showdoc.aspx?i=2224