Lite-On LTR-48125W (48/12/48) review @ CDRLabs.com

And again another review from our friends over at CDRLabs.com. This time Ian has taken a look at the latest writer from the popular manufacturer, Lite-On. The LTR-48125W can reach amazingly high speeds of 48x writing (P-CAV), 12x re-writing and 48x reading. Here's part of what CDRLabs.com thought about this drive:

In the race to have the fastest writers on the market, companies like Lite-On have pushed the current CD-RW technology to its limits. Until now, most 32x and 40x writers have used Z-CLV, or Zone CLV, technology. With these drives the session was broken up into zones, with each zone recording at a constant speed. To allow the LTR-48125W to write at 48x, Lite-On was one of the first companies to implement CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) writing technology. With CAV the drive maintains a constant rotation speed. As you move toward the outside edge of the CD, the data transfer rates increase. In the case of the LTR-48125W, the drive starts writing at 22x and reaches 48x at the end of the session.

Part of the Conclusion:

Lite-On definitely has another winner here. The LTR-48125W is the fastest writer we have tested so far. The LTR-48125W completed our writing tests 15 seconds faster than our previous champ, the LG GCE-8400B, and was more than 30 seconds faster than the 40x writers from TEAC and Lite-On. These are some very impressive numbers considering that most 40x writers were only a few seconds faster than their 32x counterparts. Before you run out and buy one of these, you should know that these speeds don't come without a price. Much of the 32x and 40x media we used to test the LTR-48125W was not able to handle 48x writing speeds. The writing quality when writing at 48x was also questionable in a few cases. Hopefully these problems will become a thing of the past when 48x media starts to become available.

The LTR-48125W wouldn't be complete without a good number of features. The LTR-48125W is the first drive from Lite-On to ship with support for the new Mount Rainier format enabled. The drive really surprised me by completing our Mt. Rainier tests in less than half the time it took the writers from TEAC and Mitsumi. And while the drive's 1984KB buffer is pretty small, its SMART-BURN technology worked well to prevent buffer underruns.

Overall the Lite-On LTR-48125W gets a score of 8. Not the highest scores we've seen for a Lite-On drive. If you're interested in reading the complete review you can by clicking here.

Source: CDRLabs.com