Doubt in choosing an Optiarc writer

[witrus]

Hi,

My Asus DRW-24B1LT 1.03 has died and I'm going to buy a Sony Optiarc writer. I'm confused when it comes to choose between these models: AD-7200S-0B, AD-7240S-0B, AD-7260S-0B or AD-7280-0B. I have them located to buy here in Europe. My main interest are quality burns with Verbatim DVD+R DL (MKM-003-00). Use a motherboard P45/ICH10R and Win7/Win8.

I have located the oldest in Germany (I'm Spanish), and the newest: 7260S and 7280S, near where I live. Worth the 7200S?, I have understood that it is the best of the four.

[Ian]

If it was me, I'd go with the 7240S or 7260S. Both are excellent drives. I have not used the 7280 though so I really can't say anything about it.

[witrus]

Then, think I'll get the 7260S, cos is nearest where i live. In fact I can buy this last at two streets away. If you say me it's a good writer for MKM-003-00, i'm happy.

This results are confusing me:

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/Reviews ... &PageId=17

But surely the results in my system depend of some others variables like firmware, software installed in my system, sata controller, etc.

What do you say about?

[Ian]

Yeah, those results aren't very useful unless you understand what you're looking at. The important numbers are the PI8, POF and Jitter. There is that one spike in their graph but they don't really say if they saw that with more than one disc. We didn't see anything like that in our tests.

[witrus]

Thanks, Ian, for your interest.

Ok. I understand that this media was burned with 7260S and readed with a Benq DW1640. Hence, tomorrow will buy the Optiarc nearest to my home (7260S). The only thing I can say about his DVD+R DL results, is that seems to be slower than 7240S, but that question is not very important to me while the quality of burnings may be high.

I am actually a newbie in this area, but there is always time to start a hobby . What reader (independent of writer) can you suggest me for my future tests? (if possible not difficult to buy now)

[Ian]

Ok. I understand that this media was burned with 7260S and readed with a Benq DW1640. Hence, tomorrow will buy the Optiarc nearest to my home (7260S). The only thing I can say about his DVD+R DL results, is that seems to be slower than 7240S, but that question is not very important to me while the quality of burnings may be high.

If you're burning at 8x, both drives take about the same amount of time.

Are you looking to do write quality tests? Most people use Lite-On drives these days as they can measure PI/PIF errors as well as Jitter and are cheap.

[witrus]

Well, I had 3 Lite-On writers and performed very well.

Again, thanks for your expert opinion