Gift guide - Blu-ray writers

by Staff writers on Nov 11, 2008

Blu-ray writers are more affordable than ever. We look at four internal models to find the best way to go high-def. The last time we did a round-up of optical drives, the former war was in full swing. But now Blu-ray has at last seen off HD DVD and taken its place as the industry standard for high-capacity optical media.

< back to christmas gift guide

read full review	LG GGW-H20L $287 http://www.lg.com.au from www.shoppingsquare.com.au The cheapest writer available at the time of going to press: the LG GGW-H20L. Like the Plextor, this unit has full dual-layer Blu-ray support and even reads HD DVDs. Indeed, it’s not just the drive’s capabilities that call the Plextor to mind: the two drives’ designs are so similar that we suspect their internal mechanisms may originate from the same factory in Korea. The LG’s performance in our tests seemed to confirm this suspicion, scoring almost identically to the Plextor with every type of disc. It dispatched CD-Rs in less than three minutes and burned a 4.7GB DVD-R in 6mins 3secs. With Blu-ray media, the LG proved even faster than the Plextor – perhaps due to a more intelligent controller. It took slightly more than 22 minutes to burn a 25GB BD-R, while the other drives took around two minutes longer. Filling a BD-RE took just over 39 minutes – almost 40 seconds faster than the Plextor and more than five minutes ahead of the Lite-On and Pioneer units. Even if the LG were the same price as the Plextor, these faster results would make it a better deal. But at $50 less it’s certainly a bargain – and our pick of this bunch – even if you don’t need the HD DVD playback. The deliciously affordable LG was convincingly the fastest drive for burning Blu-ray media. read full review

	Pioneer BDR-202BK $336 http://www.pioneer.com.au from www.bttech.com.au The $336 Pioneer BDR-202BK is the slowest burner here. Burning a CD-R with this drive took four-and-a-half minutes, while a DVD-R took a little more than seven minutes. In both cases, that’s more than a minute behind the Plextor. The Pioneer redeemed itself a little with Blu-ray media, burning a BD-R in exactly 24 minutes – around 20 seconds longer than average. But its BD-RE time of 45mins 9secs was almost six minutes behind the front runners. Factor in the Pioneer’s limited disc support – it can’t read or write dual-layer Blu-ray discs – and, overall, it’s hard to recommend.

	Plextor PX-B920SA $TBC http://www.plextor-asia.com The Plextor PX-B920SA not only reads and writes dual-layer Blu-ray discs but also reads HD DVDs. That’s handy for anyone who bought a few HD DVD movies when the format still looked viable, but since releases have now dried up, its usefulness will only diminish over time. The Plextor’s a fast drive: in our tests it consistently came within a few seconds of first place. It filled a 650MB CD-R in just 2mins 44 secs and a single-layer DVD-R in 6mins 3secs. Switching to DVD+RW media inevitably slowed things down a bit, but only to 7mins 25secs – which is still a very respectable score. The Plextor’s lustre dimmed just a little when confronted with Blu-ray discs. It took an unremarkable 24mins 14secs to fill a BD-R, while filling a 25GB rewritable BD-RE disc took 39mins 57secs. Overall, it’s a very capable all-rounder.

	Lite-On DH 4B1S $453 http://www.liteonit.com from www.skycomp.com.au At $453, the Lite-On DH 4B1S is anything but affordable and it lacks the Plextor’s HD DVD support and, perhaps more importantly, it can’t read or write dual-layer BD-R discs. In our tests it took 7mins 27secs to burn a DVD-R – almost a minute-and-a- half longer than the Plextor. Its strongest suit was writing dual-layer DVD-R discs: its write time of 21mins 18secs was six minutes ahead of any other drive. But with all other types of CD and DVD media, it took longer than average. With BD-Rs, the DH 4B1S performed similarly to the Plextor, taking slightly more than 24 minutes to fill the disc. Burning to a BD-RE took a little more than 47 minutes – the slowest on test. Overall, it’s a below-average performer.