52X CDRW: MSI & Samsung Review - PAGE 1

The current cream of the crop in CD writers sports 52X write, 24X rewrite, 52X read speeds - speeds that would have seemed unachievable only a few years ago. However, even as processors have defied old naysayers with seemingly unstoppable speed increases, the same has been seen in optical drive development.

As we write this article, 52X CD Writers are now the much accepted norm - you can pick up a 52X burner for as low as $50USD. As with other technologies, time has given us better, and faster products at lower and lower price points. The winner is, of course, the consumer. Today we look at two 52X drives from MSI and Samsung, the latter of which, you may recall, is a global leader in combo drive technologies, and which has invested much time into development of optical technologies.

Extreme Burning Speeds

With these drives, burning speeds take on a whole new dimension: you've already seen what 24X ReWrite burning can do in our Samsung 348B Combo drive review, where a complete CD-RW disc took less than 4 minutes! I think many of you would agree that is an impressive number. With 52X CD-R write speeds, you can expect to CD-R burn times closing in on the 3minute mark. Imagine burning an entire CD in under 3minutes - our eyes with have bulged out had you told us this was possible a year ago.

Media Considerations

At this level of performance, it's no surprise that there are, once again, burn speed limitations imposed by the quality of your media. If you are like us, you probably have a slower drive already, maybe a 24X/12X/40X drive for which you have bought a spindle of 24X or even 32X CD-R blanks. Chances are, at the time of pressing, those blanks you have only qualified at 24-32X burning - faster drives, like the 52X burnders reviewed here, will detect these discs and assess their maximum reliable burn speed, and will enforce these speed limitations. The same applies for CD-RW discs. In essence, if you want to even be able to choose the highest burn speeds, you'll need to buy newer discs rated at those burn speeds. We tested several brands of bulk CD-R discs and CD-RW discs that we already had, most of them rated at speeds several grades below the maximum speeds of these new drives - most of them were limited to the lower speeds. It's a frustrating experience, and definitely something to keep in mind when upgrading. If you have hundreds of bulk CD-Rs from a year ago, you won't be able to take advantage of the new burn speeds using those discs.

The good new is that most drives drives comes with at least one CD-R disc rated at their maximum speed, and some drives, like the MSI, even come with a starter CD-RW disc. When buying for a CD-RW drive, you are ALWAYS encouraged to look for one that comes bundled with a high speed CD-RW disc. Because of their re-useability, higher cost, and slower time to market, you're going to thank yourself for checking on this one point.