Model: BenQ DW240S
Price: $35 inc. GST (street)
Rating: 9 out of 10
Web: www.benq.com.au
With DVD burners dropping so low in price, you could be forgiven any drive will do. Of the dozen or so we’ve tested lately, this BenQ DW240S delivers decent performance and value.
Using Sony 16X-speed DVD-R media, we could only get this 24X-speed drive to burn at the media’s rated 16X-speed however, the test results showed our test unit to be a very decent drive, scoring a PI maximum error count of 28 (up to 280 allowed) and a PIF max of 3 (up to 4 allowed).
Just because a drive claims to burn 16X-speed doesn’t mean they all burn at the same rate – the 6m51s it took for this drive to burn out 4.38GB test DVD was one of the slower times we’ve seen – for example, the LG GH22NS50 managed the same burn at the same notional 16X-speed rate in 5m50s.
The drive features a SATA interface and comes with Nero 8 Essentials software to handle everything from video to burning your discs.
CD-R/RW write speeds are 48X/32X, DVD-R/RW/DL speeds are 24x/6x/12x, DVD+R/RW/DL speeds are 24x/8x/12X while the drive will also handle DVD-RAM media at up to 12X.
Although not the fastest drive we’ve seen, it does a pretty decent job given its low price with good quality burns that should help your discs last longer.