MSI CR52-M (52/32/52) review @ CDRLabs.com

September 30, 2003

Our friends from CDRLabs have published their latest review of the MSI CR52-M CD-RW recorder. The drive
(should I say, 'of course?') supports 52x read and write speeds while re-writing can be done at 32x. In the CDRLabs test lab the MSI drive has undergone the usual tests and CDRLabs has come up with the following conclusion:

MSI has obviously put a lot of effort into the CR52-M. The result is one of their best drives to date. As a reader, MSI's new drive performed pretty well. With its "speed boost" enabled, the CR52-M reached speeds as high as 52x when reading pressed and CD-R media, but slowed to 40x when reading CD-RW discs. The drive also had some pretty good seek times, no matter what media was used. Unfortunately, MSI's new writer wasn't as fast as I had hoped in our DAE tests. While most of the 52x writers we've looked at have been able to rip audio CD's at 48x or faster, the CR52-M reached a maximum DAE speed of only 41x.

If you're looking for a fast writer, the CR52-M won't disappoint. While the drive's average writing speed wasn't as fast as one might expect, it turned in some praiseworthy writing times. In fact, the CR52-M came in only a few seconds behind our current champ, the Lite-On LTR-52327S. The drive also wrote to most of our test media at 52x while keeping the writing errors to a minimum. Unfortunately, the CR52-M didn't do quite as well in some of our rewriting tests. The drive's times were very good when rewriting with programs like Nero, but would not packet write at anything faster than 16x.

The MSI drive is very affordable at a price of only $ 40 and lower. Because the drive has good performance overall it gets CDRLabs' Best Buy Award. CDRLabs was also quite pleased with the drive's looks as "MSI has gone the extra mile by giving their new writer some of the nicest looking LED's I've seen." You can check out the complete review of the MSI CR52-M here.

Source: CDRLabs.com