Samsung SH-S162L 16x DVD±RW/RAM

Model: Samsung SH-S162L 16x DVD±RW/RAM
Manufacturer: Toshiba Samsung Storage Technology Corporation
Provided By: Samsung Electronics America

Samsung is one of the most respected names in the electronics industry. Founded more than 30 years ago, this Korean company has grown into one of the world's largest electronics manufacturers, offering everything from tiny semiconductors to huge projection televisions. Samsung is no stranger to the optical storage industry either. One of the world's leading manufacturers of optical drives, they offer a wide range of products for the OEM and retail markets.

This past winter, Samsung introduced one of their first "Super-Multi" drives, the SH-S162L. Featuring some of the fastest reading and writing speeds available, the SH-S162L is capable of 16x DVD±R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+R DL, 4x DVD-R DL and 5x DVD-RAM writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 16x. Of course, Samsung's new "Super-Multi" drive can do more than read and write DVD's. The SH-S162L also includes features like 48x CD reading and writing speeds, 32x rewriting speeds and support for HP's LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling system. Developed as an alternative to markers and stick-on labels, LightScribe lets users burn graphics and text onto the tops of specially coated discs.

With features and specs like this, it's hard not to be impressed by Samsung's new "Super-Multi" drive. To give you an idea of what to expect from the SH-S162L, we'll take a look at its features and then see how it compares to some of the 16x DVD±RW drives from the competition. Does the SH-S162L have what it takes? Keep reading as we find out.

The SH-S162L we received from Samsung was the bulk, or OEM, version. While they were able to provide a copy of the software CD, the drive did not come with anything else.

Physical Features:

The drive Samsung sent us for this review was manufactured in December of 2005 and had firmware TS01.For this review the drive's firmware has been updated to version TS04.

From the front, the SH-S162L looks very similar to Samsung's other 16x DVD±RW drives. It not only shares the same basic bezel design, but has many of the same logos. Along with the large "WriteMaster" logo, you can see a few showing support for theDVD+R DL and DVD Multi specifications, as well as HP's LightScribe technology.

Below the tray you can see the SH-S162L's single LED. Itlights up green when the drive is reading or writing.

The rear of the SH-S162L is fairly straight forward. By looking at the picture below you can see the drive's IDE interface, power connector and audio output connectors.

Starting from the left of the IDE connection you'll see the jumper switch for master, slave and cable select. Next to the jumper block is the analog audio connector. The connector on the far left is the digital audio output.

Technical Specs:

The specs below have been taken from Samsung's website and the manual located on the software CD.

LightScribe:

Note: We took a much closer look at LightScribe technology in our review of the BenQ DW1625. In this review we'll just go over some of the basics and see how the SH-S162L performs with the bundled software.

The SH-S162L is the latest drive from Samsung to feature LightScribe technology. Developed by HP, LightScribe lets you burn durable, silk screen quality labels directly onto your CD's and DVD's using the same drive that burned the data. According to HP, it's as simple as burning the data, flipping the disc, and then burning the label.

Of course you can't do this with just any drive, media or software. While LightScribe capable drives use the same laser when burning both the data and label, they have to be able to accurately control the laser's focus and position as well as the spindle speed. They also must be able to recognize LightScribe media. These special discs have a thin dye coating on the label side that absorbs laser light. This triggers a chemical reaction that produces a color change, allowing the user to print text, artwork or graphics.

Even if you have a LightScribe capable drive and media, you will need software that supports it. Most major software companies have pledged support for the technology. However, at the time of this review the list of compatible software is still relatively short. For the SH-S162L, Samsung turned to Nero. Using the bundled software you can both create and burn LightScribe disc labels.

Once you've created your LightScribe label, you're ready to print it. Before you can do this though, you will need to choose the contrast. Keep in mind this option not only changes the level of detail, it also affects the amount of time it takes to print the label. The higher the quality, the longer the process will take.

How long does it take to print a label? For testing purposes, we created a few discs using Verbatim's LightScribe (v1.0 and v1.2) CD-R and DVD+R media. In all cases, the quality has been set to "best". The results are shown below.

Verbatim CD-R - 25 minutes		Verbatim CD-R v1.2 - 21 minutes

Verbatim DVD+R - 29 minutes		Verbatim DVD+R v1.2 - 21 minutes

As you can see, the LightScribe v1.2 media offers a considerable performance advantage. These discs utilize a new coating that allows for faster printing speeds. In some cases, it can cut as much as 30% off of the total printing time.

If you want to use LightScribe v1.2 media with your SH-S162L, simply update your computer's LightScribe host software. This update can be downloaded from Nero or the LightScribe website.

More Features:

By looking at the picture below, you can see that Samsung's new DVD writer is identified as a "TSSTcorp CD/DVDW SH-S162L."

Nero also shows that the SH-S162L has a maximum CD writing speed of 48x and a 2048KB buffer. This buffer is also backed up by MediaTek's Super Link technology. According to Nero, Samsung's new DVD writer can also write CD-Text and overburn. When testing the drive's capacity, it had no problems overburning up to 99 minutes with our CompUSA media.

Using Alex Noe's Weak Sector Utility we were able to determine that the SH-S162L is a "two sheep" burner and is capable of backing titles protected by SafeDisc 2.90. Like most drives, it did not pass the "three sheep" test.

Here is a screen shot from Nero's InfoTool. This program queries the drive to see what its reading and writing capabilities are. InfoTool had no problems detecting the SH-S162L's maximum reading and writing speeds, recording modes, buffer underrun protection and 2MB buffer.

InfoTool also shows that the SH-S162L is an RPC-2 DVD drive. This means that the drive's region is stored in the firmware. The region can be changed five times and after that it cannot be changed anymore. Unfortunately, a patched RPC-1 firmware is not yet available for this drive.

While InfoTool gives us a quick glance at the SH-S162L's features, DVDINFOpro provides a little more information on some of the drive's reading and writing capabilities. By looking at the screenshot above you can see that while Samsung's new drive can read and write to DVD+R DL, DVD-R DL and DVD-RAM media, it does not support the Mt. Rainier format.

Samsung's new DVD writer also supports a feature called "bitsetting".The SH-S162L automatically sets the book type of DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL media to "DVD-ROM" without any input from the user. This feature comes in handy if you have an older DVD player that has problems playing recordable media.

Samsung has once again turned to Nero for their software bundle. The CD that comes with the SH-S162L contains copies of Nero Express 6, NeroVision Express 3, Nero Recode 2, BackItUp, Nero ShowTime 2 and InCD.

Nero Express 6 - With Nero Express, Nero has taken the features and performance people have come to expect from Nero Burning Rom and combined them with a user friendly interface. While the interface has been simplified, Nero Express still supports more advanced features like VCD and DVD creation, CD/DVD duplication, overburning, CD-Text and realtime audio filters

The version of Nero Express that Samsung included with their new DVD±RW drive is 6.6.0.19. You can download the latest version of the software from Nero's website.

NeroVision Express 3 - NeroVision Express 3 is Nero's video authoring application. Using a user friendly interface very similar to that of Nero Express, NeroVision Express makes it easy for users to capture, edit and then burn their favorite videos to VCD, SVCD or DVD or export it to Nero Digital format.

NeroVision Express also lets users add things like transitions, custom backgrounds, animated menus and text effects. You can even use it to turn your photos into custom slide shows.

Nero Recode 2 - This program from Nero can copy unprotected DVD videos onto recordable DVD media. If the source disc is larger than 4.7GB, Nero Recode 2 has the ability to remove unwanted material and compress the contents so that it will fit onto a single blank DVD disc.

Nero Recode 2 will also let you convert your DVD movies to Nero Digital. Using Ahead's own MPEG-4 audio and video encoder, an entire DVD movie can be compressed so that it will fit onto a CD. Better yet, Nero Recode 2 does this without any loss of quality.

Nero BackItUp - If you're looking for a way to quickly and easily backup your data, Nero BackItUp is the answer. This new program from Nero lets you backup your data to CD/DVD, hard disc, image recorderor another computer on your LAN.

Nero ShowTime 2 - Nero ShowTime is Nero's software DVD player. Along with support for DVD's, ShowTime can be used to play back VCD's, SVCD's and miniDVD's as well as any MPEG or AVI files you might have on your hard drive.

Nero Media Player - Nero Media Player features on-the-fly encoding of audio CD's to MP3, HE-AAC, TwinVQ, WMA, and WAV format.The MP3 encoder uses the latest audio codec technology from Fraunhofer.While most of the plugins are unrestricted, the MP3 encoder included with this version of the program is limited to only 30 audio tracks.If you need to encode more you will probably want to upgrade to Nero's NeroMIX.

InCD 4 - InCD is Nero's packet writing software. Like Roxio's Drag-to-Disc or Sonic's DLA, it allows a person to use their CD-RW or DVD±RW drive as a big floppy disk. The person can then drag and drop files onto a CD-RW or DVD±RW disc. Many people consider InCD to be one of the best packet writing tools because of its simplicity and performance.

While affordably priced, Samsung's new "Super-Multi" drive delivers a good number of features. The SH-S162L not only supports all major DVD formats, it sports some pretty impressive specs. The drive is capable of 16x DVD±R, 8x DVD+RW, 6x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+R DL, 4x DVD-R DL and 5x DVD-RAM writing speeds and a maximum DVD read speed of 16x. Along with support for LightScribe, the SH-S162L also includes features like Super Link buffer underrun protection and bitsetting. Last but not least, Samsung tops all of this off with an impressive software bundle from Nero. With all this, it's easy to see why the SH-S162L gets a 9 out of 10 for its features.

Installing the SH-S162L in our test computer took only a few minutes. After taking the drive out of the box, I set the jumper to master and installed it on the secondary IDE chain by connecting the IDE cable and power connector. When I turned on the computer the BIOS detected it as a drive supporting UDMA 33. After making sure that the DMA was enabled in the Device Manager, I was ready to start installing the software.

Software Installation:

As I mentioned earlier, the SH-S162L comes with a CD full of software from Nero. If you have autorun enabled on your computer, the menu shown below will automatically come up when you insert the disc.

As you can see, this menu is pretty straight forward. To install the writing software, you will want to choose the "Install Nero OEM Suite" option. After that, you will be taken to the Nero installation menu.

By now most of you should be pretty familiar with this menu. From here you can choose to install Nero 6, Nero Vision Express, the Nero Media Player or InCD. You can install each component individually, or everything but InCD in one shot. Once you reboot, you'll be ready to start burning your own discs.

Documentation:

While the drive we received from Samsung did not come with any printed documentation, there was a copy of the manual on the CD in electronic format. I must admit that I'm not usually a big fan of this sort of thing. However, Samsung has gone the extra mile here.Instead of just throwing a few PDF files onto the CD, Samsung has created an easy to navigate HTML based guide.

The guide starts out by going over the buttons and connectors located on the front and back of the SH-S162L. Everything is labeled clearly and the functions of each are explained very well. The guide continues on by going over the physical installation of the drive. This section covers all the basics including how to set the jumpers, install the drive into an empty drive bay and hook up the cables. The pictures Samsung has provided are very good. They've even included a few diagrams showing what a master and slave configuration should look like.

The guide finishes up by going over the basic operation of the SH-S162L. Along with information on how to use and maintain the drive, there is a short troubleshooting section containing a list of common problems as well as their solutions. Last but not least, Samsung has provided a comprehensive list of specifications for the SH-S162L. Unfortunately, the guide has very little information on LightScribe. For this, Samsung refers you to Nero's help files.

Like the other Samsung drives I've reviewed, the SH-S162L was very easy to install. I had no problems getting the drive or the software installed and working. If you need help for some reason, the documentation Samsung has provided is more than sufficient. Even then, I would have liked to have seen some information on how to create and burn LightScribe labels. With this in mind, I give the installation an 8 out of a possible 10.

While CPU, memory, OS and other variables don't often make a huge difference, there are some nonetheless. We have a computer that is used only for testing hardware. We do this so all tests can be compared reliably.

Test System:

For DVD writers the performance tests are broken down into four sections: CD read, CD write, DVD read and DVD write tests. Each benchmark test has been run three times. The score given is an average of the three. DMA has been enabled in device manager for all IDE devices supporting it.

CD Read Tests: For the read performance section of the CD-ROM benchmarks, CD WinBench 99 v3.0 and CD Speed v4.50 are used to test read speeds, seek times and CPU usage. For DAE testing both CD Speed and CD DAE are used. CD Speed is used to give an overall DAE speed rating and CD DAE is used to give the track by track extraction speeds and to check the extracted tracks for errors the drive may have created.

CD Write Tests: To test the write speeds, Nero Burning Rom is used to write 650MB and 700MB to our test media. Times are recorded. To test rewrite scores, Nero is used again to time how long it takes to write 400MB of random files and directories. Then Sonic's DLA is used to test packet writing speeds. The same files are copied and pasted in Windows Explorer and timed.

DVD Read Tests: For the read performance section of the DVD benchmarks CD Speed v4.50 is used to test read speeds, seek times, and CPU usage.

DVD Write Tests: To test the DVD write speeds, Nero Burning Rom is used to write 4GB to our test media. Times are recorded. Then Sonic's DLA is used to test packet writing speeds. The same files are copied and pasted in Windows Explorer and timed.

CD Winbench 99 Scores:

The CD Winbench test is as close as we can get to testing every day usage. It fires off eight different applications using scripts. This tries to mimic the activities of a person loading these programs onto their own computer.

Samsung's new DVD writer performed very well in our CD Winbench tests. In the transfer rate tests, the SH-S162L started reading at 20.4x (3060 / 150) on the inside and reached a maximum speed of about 43.5x (6525 / 150) on the outside. This resulted in a very good overall CD Winbench score.

CD Speed v4.50 - Pressed CD:

For this test I used a pressed CD containing one Mode 1 data track. The disc is 74:38 in size and is full of data and directories.

	Samsung SH-S162L	Lite-On SHM-165H6S	NEC ND-4550A	LG GSA-4167B
Transfer Speed Average: Start: End:	36.35x 17.51x 48.14x	36.68x 21.95x 48.50x	35.60x 20.54x 47.09x	35.63x 20.45x 47.28x
Seek Times Random: 1/3: Full:	93ms 94ms 164ms	103ms 116ms 168ms	137ms 145ms 219ms	114ms 126ms 183ms
CPU Usage 1x: 2x: 4x: 8x:	8% 6% 3% 5%	2% 4% 7% 12%	17% 1% 3% 6%	1% 1% 3% 36%

The SH-S162L performed very well when reading pressed CD's. While not as fast as the drive from Lite-On, it had no problems reaching a maximum speed of 48.14x. Of course, transfer speeds aren't everything. Samsung's new drive also had the best seek times out of the four drives here.

CD Speed v4.50 - CD-R Media:

For this test I made a copy of our pressed test CD. I used 12x rated Memorex Gold 74 minute media for the tests.

The SH-S162L wasn't nearly as fast when reading CD-R media. Looking at the scores above, you can see that it reached a maximum transfer speed of only 41x. On a positive note, the drive's seek times were again quite good.

Samsung's new DVD writer had no problems recognizing our 99 minute CompUSA media. The SH-S162L read our test disc from start to finish, reaching a maximum transfer speed of 44.65x.

CD Speed v4.50 - CD-RW Media:

For this test I made a copy of a pressed test CD. I used some PNY 80 minute CD-RW media for the tests.

Samsung's new drive also reads CD-RW media at 40x. As you can see, the SH-S162L had no problem reaching this speed in our tests.

CD DAE and CD Speed v4.50 - Pressed CD:

For this test I used Pure Funk. The CD is almost exactly 74 minutes. This helps to squeeze the maximum performance out of the CD.

Exact Audio Copy can tell us a lot about a drive's capabilities. You can see from the screen shot that while the Samsung SH-S162L supports accurate stream and has the ability to retrieve C2 error information from the CD, it does not cache audio data.

CD Speed	Samsung SH-S162L	Lite-On SHM-165H6S	NEC ND-4550A	LG GSA-4167B
Average: Start: End: DAE Quality: Accurate Stream:	30.92x 17.61x 40.87x 10 Yes	37.03x 21.26x 48.93x 10 Yes	30.94x 17.99x 40.12x 10 Yes	30.81x 17.50x 40.79x 10 Yes

The SH-S162L did pretty well in our DAE tests. While not nearly as fast as the drive from Lite-On, it hadno problems reading pressed audio CD's at 40x.

To get a better look at the quality of the extracted audio we use CD DAE. CD DAE is actually designed to be an audio ripping program. It converts the CD-DA on the CD to .wav files. We use it in our testing because it can also be used as a quick and easy way to test the quality. Where CD Speed tests the DAE as one large session, CD DAE extracts each CD track individually. It actually extracts each track twice and then compares them to check for any errors. Every error a drive creates could be a hiss or pop you would hear later in the audio tracks.

While Samsung's new DVD writer started out a little faster when extracting our test CD with CD DAE, its average and maximum speeds were slower than what we saw with CD Speed.

CD DAE and CD Speed v4.50 - CD-R Media:

For this test I used a copy of the Pure Funk CD. It's burned onto the same Memorex Gold 74 minute media I used in the CD Speed tests.

While the SH-S162L was a little slower when extracting audio from CD-R media, this didn't keep it from reaching amaximum DAE speed of 40x in our tests. So how did it do in CD Speed's advanced DAE tests? Take a look below.

Samsung's new DVD writer completed CD Speed's advanced DAE tests with an average score of 29.13x. The drive had no problems passing all of the on-the-fly tests and did not create any errors. If you look at the advanced features, you can see that the SH-S162L was able to read the CD-Text and subchannel data but failed to read the lead in and lead out sections of the CD.

To see how well Samsung's new drive can read scratched and dirty discs, I used CD Speed's ScanDisc utility to see how many sectors were damaged or unreadable. This is a very rough, but good way to test the drive's error correcting abilities.

CD Speed - ScanDisc

The SH-S162L did better than I expected. By looking at the screenshot, you can see that the drive considered only 59.4% of the CD to be "damaged". On top of that, none of the sectors on the disc were unreadable.

You can also get an idea of how well the drive can read scratched and dirty discs by using CD DAE. CD DAE will extract the audio tracks twice and then compare them. From this information we can see what the drive's average speed was and how many errors it generated.

Here too, the SH-S162L did pretty well. The scratches on the disc had little effect on the drive's speed and the number of errors remained relatively low.

CD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 6.6.0.16 andDLA 4.95:

For this test I randomly generated 650MB and 700MB of files and directories to test the time it takes the drive to write and close a CD. All of the files are between 1MB and 25MB in size and no more than 10 directories deep. All of the times below include not only the actual writing time, but the lead in and out times too. This gives a more realistic idea of how long it takes to write a CD.

The SH-S162L has a maximum CD writing speed of 48x. To reach this speed, it uses CAV, or Constant Angular Velocity. With Memorex's 48x media, the drive started writing at about 21.70x and reached a maximum speed of 49.11x at the end of the session. This gave Samsung's new DVD±RW an average writing speed of about 37.18x.

To test the SH-S162L's writing times, I wrote our test data to some Verbatimmedia rated at 52x. The results are below.

The SH-S162L did fairly well in our CD writing tests. While not as fast as the drive from Lite-On, it was able to write an entire 650MB CD in 2:45.

To test the drive's writing quality I used Lite-On IT's KProbe2. Written by Karr Wang, this utility can be used to test the number of C1 and C2 errors on a disc. For these tests I used a Lite-On LTR-52246S (firmware 6S0F) and read the discs at 32x.

Fuji 48x (Taiyo Yuden)

Memorex 52x (CMC)

Verbatim 52x

The SH-S162L's writing quality was very good. By looking at the KProbe screenshots, you can see that the discs burned by the drive had a low number of C1 errors and there were no C2 errors at all.

For the rewriting tests I created 400MB of files on the hard drive and wrote them in DAO mode using Nero. To test the packet writing speeds I copied and pasted the same files off the hard drive onto a CD-RW disc using DLA from Sonic. Verbatim's 32x Ultra Speed CD-RW media was used for these tests.

While the SH-S162L uses CAV when writing to CD-R discs, it uses Z-CLV, or Zone CLV, when rewriting at 32x. By looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it uses a total of three "zones" to reach its maximum speed. The drive starts writing at 16x and jumps to 24x at about the 7 minute mark.The SH-S162L writes at this speed until about the 27 minute mark. When it reaches this point, its writing speed increases to 32x and stays there until the end of the session.

Samsung's new DVD writer didn't do as well as some of the other drives in our rewriting tests. Due to its Z-CLV writing method, the SH-S162L took 2:32 to write 400MB with Nero and a whopping 3:34 to do the same with DLA.

The SH-S162L also erases at 32x. While it didn't have the fastest quick erase time out of the four drives here, it was able to do a full erase in a respectable 3:38.

Nero CD Speed v4.50 - DVD-ROM:

A little editorial note here. Like a CD-ROM, you will get different benchmark results depending on what kind of discs you are using. You are probably going to get varying results from a full data disc to a single layer movie disc. You're also going to get different results for single and dual layer discs.

The CD Speed website recommends using a single layer DVD-ROM disc with a capacity of at least 4GB. If you use a dual layer disc you probably won't get the best results because most DVD-ROM drives slow down to read them. Some even slow down to read single layer DVD-Video discs. To make a long story short, I am using a 4.37GB single layer, single sided disc for this test.

The SH-S162L performed very well when reading single layer DVD-ROM's. In our tests it started reading at 6.67x and reached a maximum transfer speed of 16.24x.Looking at the other scores, you can see that the drive's seek times were also quite good.

Nero CD Speed v4.50 - DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM:

First, we'll look at the drive's DVD-R and DVD-RW reading performance. For this I made copies of our DVD-ROM test disc using some general use 4x DVD-R and 2x DVD-RW media from Verbatim and then ran our usual DVD read tests with CD Speed. For the DVD-RAM tests, media from Maxell was used. The results are below.

Verbatim DVD-R DL

The SH-S162L had no problems reading DVD-R, DVD-RW and DVD-R DL media. In our tests, the drive was able to read DVD-R discs at a respectable 12x, but slowed to about 8x when reading DVD-RW and DVD-R DL media.

Maxell 5x DVD-RAM

Samsung's new drive has a maximum transfer speed of 5x when reading DVD-RAM discs. By looking at the screenshot you can see that it starts reading at about 3x and accelerates, reaching 5x at the 1.6GB mark.

Nero CD Speed v4.50 - DVD+R and DVD+RW:

Next we'll look at the drive's DVD+R and DVD+RW reading performance. For this I made a copy of our DVD-ROM test disc using some 4x DVD+R and 2.4x DVD+RW media from Verbatim. I then ran our usual DVD read tests with CD Speed. The results are below.

The SH-S162L's performance with DVD+R and DVD+RW media was very similar to what we saw with DVD-R and DVD-RW media.The drive read DVD+R discs at 12x and DVD+RW media at 8x.

Verbatim DVD+R DL

Reading Verbatim's double layer DVD+R media wasn't a problem for the SH-S162L either. The drive started reading at 3.46x and reached a maximum transfer speed of 8.31x.

Nero CD Speed v4.50 - DVD-Video:

For these tests I am using the US version of Transformers: The Movie on DVD. The disc is over 4GB and single sided.

The SH-S162L didn't slow down very much when reading single layer DVD videos. It started out at about 6.60x and reached a maximum read speed of 16.08x. Samsung's new drive was also fairly quick when reading dual layer discs. By looking at the screenshot below, you can see that the drive's transfer speeds peaked at about 8.55x.

To see how well the SHM-165H6S worked as a DVD player, I watched a few scenes from Transformers: The Movie and Star Wars: The Phantom Menace using WinDVD 4 and PowerDVD 5. The drive had no problems playing back these movies with either program and was fairly quiet.

DVD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 6.6.0.16 andDLA 4.95:

To test the DVD writing performance of Samsung's new drive I used Verbatim 16x DVD+R, 16x DVD-R, 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW media. To get the writing times, a 4.38GB image was burned to our test discs using Nero.

When writing to DVD+R and DVD-R media at 16x, the SH-S162L uses CAV. By looking at the screenshots above, you can see that Samsung's new drive starts writing at about 6.7x and accelerates, reaching its maximum speed at the end of the disc.

The SH-S162L also features 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds. In both cases the drive uses Z-CLV to reach its maximum writing speed.

The SH-S162L turned in some respectable times with DVD+R and DVD-R media. Unfortunately, due to its Z-CLV writing method, it wasn't as fast as the other drives when writing to DVD+RW and DVD-RW discs

To check the media compatibility of the SH-S162L, I ran a few tests using some of the media available in my area. The media types, along with the average time it took the drive to write our 4.38GB image, are listed below.

So what about writing quality? Testing a drive's DVD writing quality isn't easy. Until now, there were very few options, unless you wanted to shell out thousands of dollars for a certified test machine. Thanks to KProbe, we can test a disc's PI (Parity Inner) and PIF (Parity Inner Fail) rates.For these tests I used a Lite-On SOHW-1673S and read the discs at 4x with the PI and PIF ECC sums set to 8 and 1 respectively. For comparison, I also tested the discs on a BenQ DW1640. When combined with Nero CD Speed, the DW1640 is able to report PI Errors, PI Failures, Parity Outer Failures and even jitter levels. For this test, the discs are read at 8x with both the PI and PIF ECC sums set to 8.

So what are "good" results supposed to look like? With KProbe, the PI errors should not exceed 280 and the number of PIF errors should stay below 4. When testing with CD Speed, the number of PI errors should stay below 280 as well. However, because it scans with an ECC sum of 8, a higher number of PIF errors is acceptable, as long as they do not exceed 32. Since POF errors are uncorrectable, we really don't want to see any of them at all.

I also put these discs through a "stress test" by reading them back at 16x with the DW1640. By reading these discs back at this speed, we can see if there are any readability issues caused by the number of errors or high levels of jitter.

The SH-S162L's writing quality was less than impressive. In most cases, the PI rates were much higher than we'd like to see, especially when scanned with the BenQ DW1640.

Lastly, here are some results from our DVD-R test media. As you can see, the SH-S162L's writing quality was much better this time around. Aside from a few small PI/PIF spikes, the results stayed within acceptable limits.

To test the SH-S162L's packet writing performance I used DLA 4.95. Verbatim 8x DVD+RW, Verbatim 6x DVD-RW and Maxell 5x DVD-RAM media were used once again.

The SH-S162L's packet writing performance was pretty mixed. While it turned in some fairly good times with DVD-RAM media, it wasn't as fast as the other drives when reading and writing to DVD+RW and DVD-RW discs.

Double Layer DVD Write Tests - Nero Burning Rom 6.6.0.16:

To test the double layer DVD writing performance of the SH-S162L, I used Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL, Verbatim 2.4x DVD+R DL, Memorex 2.4x DVD+R DL and Verbatim 4x DVD-R DL media. I created about 8GB of random files and directories on my hard drive and then burned them to our test discs with Nero.

Finding DVD+R DL media that would work at 8x was not an easy task. The only media we found that would work at this speed were Verbatim's new 8x DVD+R DL discs. With the other DVD+R DL media, the writing speed was limited to 2.4x.

While not the fastest drive we've tested, the SH-S162L took 19:03 to write 8001MB of data with Nero. So what about writing quality? Take a look below.

The writing quality was fairly good with Verbatim's 8x DVD+R DL media. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for Verbatim's 2.4x DVD+R DL discs. While written at a slower speed, the PI/PIF rates were considerably higher this time around, especially when tested with the BenQ DW1640. The worst results were with Memorex's 2.4x DVD+R DL media. The PI/PIF rates were very high at the layer change and there were a number of PO Failures.

The SH-S162L also features 4x DVD-R DL writing speeds. To test the drive's writing times, DVD-R DL media from Verbatim was used.

With its 4x writing speed, the SH-S162L wasn't nearly as fast as the drive from NEC. In our tests, it took Samsung's new drive 27:19 to write 8001MB of data. So what about writing quality? Take a look below.

Verbatim's 4x DVD-R DL media yielded some mixed results. While the PIF rates remained relatively low, the number of PI errors was higher than we'd like to see. Nevertheless, this didn't seem to have any effect on readability.

Performance Revisited:

The performance of Samsung's new DVD±RW was pretty mixed, especially when it came to writing DVD's. While the SH-S162L turned in some good times with DVD±R discs, it wasn't as fast as some of the other drives when writing to DVD±RW and DVD-R DL discs. On the other hand, the SH-S162L performed pretty well when reading DVD's. In our tests, it was able to read single layer data and video DVD's at 16x and DVD±R media at a respectable 12x.

The SH-S162L also did relatively well in our CD read tests. Along with some very good seek times, it had no problems reading all types of media at its rated speeds. When it came to writing CD's, Samsung's new drive gave us some mixed results. While the SH-S162L turned in some impressive times when writing to CD-R media, its Z-CLV writing method put it at a slight disadvantage in our rewriting tests. With all things considered, the SH-S162L gets a 6 out of 10 for the performance section of this review.

Like most of the DVD writers we've looked at lately, the SH-S162L can write to both DVD+R and DVD-R media at 16x. At this speed it took the drive a little more than 6 minutes to write an entire 4.7GB DVD.The SH-S162L also performed pretty well with DVD-RAM discs. However, its Z-CLV writing method put it at a disadvantage when writing to DVD+RW and DVD-RW media. The SH-S162L was able to redeem itself somewhat in our double layer DVD+R recording tests. Thanks to its 8x writing speed, the drive took about 19 minutes to burn 8GB of data.

When it came to media compatibility, the SH-S162L gave us some mixed results. While the drive wrote tomost of our test media at its rated speeds, it would not write to any 8x DVD±R media at 16x. Also keep in mind that if you want to write to DVD+R DL media at 8x, you will need to buy media rated at this speed. More concerning was the SH-S162L's writing quality. As you saw in our tests, there were a number of cases where the PI/PIF rates were quite high. Hopefully this will be fixed in a future firmware update.

Samsung's new drive also performed pretty well in our DVD read tests. The drive was able to read single layer DVD-ROM's and DVD-Videos at 16x and had some very good seek times. Reading recordable media wasn't a problem for the SH-S162L either. In our tests, it read DVD±R discs at 12x and both DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at a respectable 8x.

When it came to reading CD's, the SL-S162L's performance was a mixed bag. While the drive read pressed media at 48x, its CD-R and CD-RW read speeds were limited to only 40x. This was a little surprising considering most drives can read pressed and CD-R media at the same speed. As a writer, the SH-S162L performed fairly well. The drive turned in some very good times with CD-R media. However, its Z-CLV writing method put it at a slight disadvantage in our rewriting tests.

The SH-S162L also has its share of features. Along with support for all major CD and DVD formats, it has a 2MB buffer that is backed up by Super Link buffer underrun protection. The drive also has a good number of writing and rewriting speeds to choose from and has the ability to set the book type of DVD+R/RW and DVD+R DL media. Most notable though, is the SH-S162L's LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling system. With LightScribe, you can burn graphics and text onto the tops of specially coated discs.

For what it offers, Samsung's new DVD writer is surprisingly affordable. Available in your choice of black or beige, the OEMversion of the SH-S162L can be picked up for less than $50 through some of the vendors listed on Pricegrabber.

Highs:

• 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 media at 8x
• Writes to DVD-R DL media at 4x
• Reads and writes DVD-RAM media at 5x
• Reads single layer DVD-ROM's at 16x
• Reads DVD±R media at 12x
• Reads DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at 8x
• Features 48x CD-R and 32x CD-RW writing speeds
• Good selection of writing and rewriting speeds
• Low seek times
• Features Super Link buffer underrun protection
• Supports bitsetting for DVD+R/RW and DVD+R DL media
• Includes software from Nero
• Supports 99 minute media
• Affordably priced

Lows:

• Questionable writing quality with some DVD+R and DVD+R DL media
• Slower than other drives when writing to DVD-RW, DVD+RW and CD-RW media
• Cannot write to 8x DVD±R media at 16x
• Packet writes and erases DVD-RW media at only 4x
• Reads CD-R media at only 40x
• Has a 2048KB buffer