Our friends from CDRLabs.com have wrapped up their latest review of the MSI DragonWriter. This MSI drive, model MS-8348A can read and write discs at 48x and re-write discs at 16x:
 One of the latest additions to MSI's rapidly growing lineup of optical storage products is the DragonWriter MS-8348A. Along with 48x reading and writing speeds, the MS-8348A is the first drive from MSI to feature 16x rewriting speeds. Thanks to its Oak Technology chipset, the MS-8348A also has features like ExacLink buffer underrun protection and a 2MB buffer. Of course, MSI has also included everything you need to begin recording right away, like a software CD with Ahead Software's Nero Burning Rom, blank media, and not only one, but two manuals. |
Part of the Conclusion:
After being a little disappointed by the performance of MSI's 40x writer, I went into this review not really knowing what to expect. While the MS-8348A is not the fastest 48x writer we've tested, it does deliver some pretty decent performance and a healthy dose of features at an affordable price.
Other than the higher than average full seek times, the MS-8348A did pretty well in CD read tests. The drive had no problems exceeding its rated speed with pressed and CD-R media and was able to read CD-RW discs at 38x. The MS-8348A's DAE speeds were not quite as fast as some of the other drives we've tested. Where most of the 48x writers we've tested have been able to rip audio CD's at 48x, MSI's new writer was limited to 40x. When it came to writing CD's, the MS-8348A's writing quality and media compatibility were very good with the 150D firmware. Unfortunately, the drive's Z-CLV writing method kept it from being one of the fastest 48x writers we've tested.
The MSI DragonWriter MS-8348A gets an overall score of 8 and also gets CDRLabs' Best Buy Award. If you want to read how CDRLabs got to their conclusion click here.
Source: CDRLabs.com
