LG has come a long way since they introduced their first Super Multi Blue drive. With each new drive, they've raised the bar in regards to performance and features. While lacking support for the now defunct HD DVD format, the BH08LS20 continues this trend by offering some of the fastest BD reading and writing speeds available as well as support for technologies like LightScribe.
The BH08LS20 is the first drive from LG with the ability to write to both BD-R and BD-R DL media at 8x. At this speed, the drive took a little more than 13 minutes to burn an entire 25GB BD-R disc, beating the Sony BWU-300S by a small margin. The BH08LS20 also performed very well when writing to BD-R DL media, burning a full 50GB BD-R DL disc in a less than 32 minutes. Most importantly, the drive was able to do this with a wide range of media, including some rated at only 2x.
Using the bundled software, the BH08LS20 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 and BD-R DL media at 6x and Blu-ray Disc Movies and BD-RE discs at 4.8x.
LG's new drive also has the ability to read and write to all standard DVD formats, including DVD-RAM. The BH08LS20 performed very well when writing to DVD±R discs, taking less than 6 minutes to burn an entire 4.7GB DVD. The drive also had no problems holding its own when writing to DVD±RW and DVD-RAM media. However, its 4x DVD±R DL writing speed put it at a slight disadvantage in our tests. Nevertheless, the BH08LS20 was fairly quick when reading DVD's. In our tests, it was able to read single layer DVD-ROM's and DVD±R media at 16x but slowed to only 4.8x when reading DVD-Videos.
Reading and writing CD's wasn't a problem for the BH08LS20 either. In our tests, it read pressed and CD-R media at speeds as high as 48x and CD-RW discs at 39x. 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 BH08LS20 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.
Like LG's previous Super Multi Blue drives, the BH08LS20 isn't short on features. To prevent buffer underruns, the drive is equipped with a 4MB buffer that is backed up by some sort of buffer underrun technology. The BH08LS20 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. Last but not least, 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 Super Multi Blue drive is surprisingly affordable. Current prices vary depending on the seller, but the retail version of the BH08LS20 can be picked up for less than $220 on Pricegrabber.
| LG BH08LS20 8x Blu-ray Disc ReWriter |
|
| Features: Installation: Performance: |
9 8 8 |
| Overall: | 8 |
Highs:
- Writes to BD-R and BD-R DL media at 8x
- Writes to BD-RE 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
- Reads single layer BD-ROM's at 8x
- Reads BD-R and BD-R DL media at 8x
- Reads BDMV and BD-RE media at 4.8x
- Reads single layer DVD-ROM's at 16x
- Reads DVD±R media at 16x
- Reads DVD±RW media at 10x
- Reads DVD±R DL media at 8x
- Features 48x CD-R and 24x CD-RW writing speeds
- Includes buffer underrun prevention technology
- 4MB buffer
- Good CD-R and DVD±R writing quality
- Low seek times
- Includes software from CyberLink
- Nice looking design with bright blue LED
- Supports bitsetting for DVD+R and DVD+R DL media
- Reasonably priced
Lows:
- Writes to DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media at only 4x
- Questionable writing quality with some DVD+R DL media
- Reads DVD-Videos at only 4.8x
- Cannot set the book type of DVD+RW media
- Overburns to only 95:10
