It's monday again, so what else to expect then a review by the guys of CDRlabs. This time they reviewed the Freecom 32A, a CD-RW drive capable of writing at 32 speed, rewriting at 10 speed and reading at 40 speed.
It has a 4 MB buffer to prevent buffer underruns supported by Sanyo's Burnproof. The drive also uses the Optimum Power Control technology developed by Sanyo; FlexSS-BP. The drive comes with Roxio's Easy CD Creator. Here are the highs and lows.
Highs: |
One of the faster 32x writers currently available.
Very good data transfer speeds with pressed and CD-R media.
Features Sanyo's BURN-Proof and FlexSS-BP technologies.
Good DAE speeds.
Supports UDMA 33.
Includes Roxio's Easy CD Creator 5.1. This version supports Windows 2000 and XP.
Very good retail package. It includes media, cables, software and even a CD labeling pen!
Two years of warranty (in Europe) with unlimited helpdesk support!
Lows:
Sanyo's FlexSS-BP needs some tweaking. The 32A wrote to most media at 32A but the discs were not 100% readable.
Most current media cannot handle the drive's speeds.
Seek times are higher than average.
Fairly loud when reading and writing CD's.
The drive had a tendency to slow down when doing DAE with pressed audio CD's.
Poor performance when reading scratched and dirty discs.
The drive has a maximum CD-RW read speed of only 32x .
Overall the drive performs very well and get's a 9/10. The drive can read subchannel information from audio and data tracks. However, the drive does not support correct EFM encoding.
If you want more information about what writer to get or if you have problems with your current hardware then be sure to check out our Hardware Forum !
Source: CDRlabs
