ASUS, a well known and respected maker of high end motherboards has kindly provided us with its latest DVD writer, the ASUS DRW-1814BLT for review. Unlike most optical drives on the market, this drive features an SATA interface, which means that the wide IDE cable can be done away with in systems where its existing hard drives and any optical drives already use SATA. The drive features 18x DVD±R, 8x DVD±R DL, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 48x CD-R and CD-RW write speeds and LightScribe direct disc labelling.
For DVD-RAM lovers who manage to get hold of the rare 12x DVD-RAM media, this drive features an impressive 14x DVD-RAM write speed. With 2.4x DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media widely available, this drive also provides an "Over-Speed Burning" capability to write these two formats at 8x. Finally, for compatibility with DVD players and drives picky about the disc bit setting, this drive features the ability to set the bit setting for DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL media.
Our reviewer The Kipper has carried out a full review of this drive, which covers write, read and disc quality tests over a wide variety of CD and DVD recordable media. To see how this drive performs, including writing DVD+R DL 2.4x media at 8x and the sheep test, please head over to the review here. Once you have a look, feel free to ask questions or comment on the review in this dedicated forum thread for the review.
