Over the last few years, we've had a number of LG's Super Multi Blue drives in the 'Labs. Offering a good mix of performance and features, these drives have become the choice of enthusiasts as well as some of our favorites. The BH12LS38 continues this trend by offering some of the fastest BD reading and writing speeds available as well as support for technologies like LightScribe.
The BH12LS38 is currently one of the few drives with the ability to write to both BD-R and BD-R DL media at 12x. At this speed, the drive completed our tests in record time, burning a full 25GB disc in less than 10 minutes and a full 50GB disc in a less than 22 minutes. The BH12LS38 wasn't nearly as fast when writing to BD-RE media. However, its performance was on par with the other Blu-ray Disc writers I've tested.
Using the bundled software, the BH12LS38 played all of the Blu-ray movies I had on hand, including those protected by BD+ and with BD-Live enabled features. The drive also performed fairly well in our transfer rate tests, reading BD-R discs at 10x and both BD-RE and BD-R DL media at a respectable 8x. Unfortunately, the BH12LS38 slowed to only 4.8x when reading AACS protected BD-ROM's. While this doesn't have any effect on movie playback, there are better drives out there if you want to rip BD movies.
LG's new drive also has the ability to read and write to all standard DVD formats. The BH12LS38 performed very well when writing to DVD±R discs, taking about 6 minutes to burn an entire 4.7GB DVD. The drive also had no problems holding its own when writing to other types of media and its writing quality was pretty good, even with DVD±R DL discs. When it came to reading DVD's, the BH12LS38 was able to read single layer DVD-ROM's and DVD±R discs at 16x and other types of recordable media at 12x.
Reading and writing CD's wasn't a problem for the BH12LS38 either. In our tests, it read pressed and CD-R media at speeds as high as 48x and CD-RW discs at 40x. This level of performance carried over to our DAE tests, where the drive ripped audio CD's at speeds as high as 40x. As a writer, the BH12LS38 performed as expected. The drive turned in some respectable times thanks to its 48x CD-R and 24x CD-RW writing speeds, and its writing quality was quite good.
LG's new Super Multi Blue drive also has its share of features. To prevent buffer underruns, the BH12LS38 is equipped with a 4MB buffer that is backed up by some sort of buffer underrun technology. The drive also supports HP's LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling system and has the ability to set the book type of DVD+R and DVD+R DL media. To top it all off, LG has included a great software bundle from CyberLink.
In the end, it usually comes down to price. For what it offers, LG's new Blu-ray Disc writer is surprisingly affordable. The retail packaged BH12LS38 can be purchased from Amazon or through the retailers listed on Pricegrabber for less than $115. If you don't need the extras the retail version includes, you can save some money by purchasing the OEM packaged BH12LS38 for as little as $80 through online retailers like Newegg.
| LG BH12LS38 12x Blu-ray Disc ReWriter |
|
| Features: Installation: Performance: |
9 9 8 |
| Overall: | 9 |
Highs:
- Writes to BD-R and BD-R DL media at 12x
- Writes to BD-R LtH media at 6x
- Writes to BD-RE and BD-RE DL media at 2x
- Writes to DVD-R and DVD+R media at 16x
- Writes to DVD+RW media at 8x
- Writes to DVD-RW media at 6x
- Writes to DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media at 8x
- Reads single layer BD-ROM's and BD-R media at 10x
- Reads BD-RE and BD-R DL media at 8x
- Reads single layer DVD-ROM's at 16x
- Reads DVD±R media at 16x
- Reads DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at 12x
- Reads and writes to DVD-RAM media at 12x
- Features 48x CD-R and 24x CD-RW writing speeds
- Good DVD and CD writing quality
- Includes buffer underrun prevention technology
- Supports LightScribe technology
- 4MB buffer
- Low seek times
- Includes CyberLink's Blu-ray Disc Suite
- Nice looking design with bright blue LED
- Supports bitsetting for DVD+R and DVD+R DL media
- Affordably priced
Lows:
- Reads AACS protected BD-ROM's at only 4.8x
- Cannot set the book type of DVD+RW media
- Overburns to only 95:10
