CDRLabs reviewed the ASUS CRW-5232AS

March 13, 2004

Over at CDRLabs.com we can find a review of the ASUS CRW-5232AS with "QuieTrack". This new technology should help reducing noise without sacrificing performance. For more information about how this technology works, refer to the features page of the CDRLabs review. The drive can read/write at 52x, rewrite at 32x and has a 2MB buffer.

Parts of the conclusion:
As a writer, the CRW-5232AS is hard to beat. The drive flew through our writing tests in record time, beating our current champ, the LTR-52327S, by a couple of seconds. The CRW-5232AS's writing quality was also pretty good. However, its media compatibility could be better. While I didn't have any problems finding media that would work at 52x, FlextraSpeed prevented us from writing to a number of discs at this speed. Rewriting wasn't a problem for the CRW-5232AS either. Unlike some of the other drives we've looked at, it was able to rewrite at 32x with programs like Nero and when packet writing.

ASUS's new CD-RW also did pretty well in our CD read tests. While there were a few occasions where its full seek times got a little high, the CRW-5232AS exhibited some good transfer speeds. The drive had no problems reading pressed and CD-R media and came close to reaching 39x with CD-RW discs. This level of performance carried over to our DAE tests, where the CRW-5232AS was able to rip audio CD's at speeds as high as 52x. Unfortunately, the drive ran into a few problems when reading scratched discs.