Samsung SH-S223Q 22x DVD±RW/RAM

DVD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 7.11.10.0 and DLA 5.20:

To test the DVD writing performance of Samsung's new drive I used Taiyo Yuden 16x DVD+R, Taiyo Yuden 16x DVD-R, Verbatim 8x DVD+RW and Verbatim 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 22x, the SH-S223Q uses CAV. By looking at the screenshots above, you can see that Samsung's new drive starts writing at about 9x and accelerates, reaching its maximum speed at the end of the disc.

The SH-S223Q also features 8x DVD+RW and 6x DVD-RW writing speeds. While the drive uses CLV when writing to DVD-RW media, it uses Z-CLV to reach its maximum DVD+RW writing speed.

Samsung's new "Super WriteMaster" drive performed fairly well in our DVD writing tests. While its Z-CLV writing method put it at a slight disadvantage when writing to DVD+RW discs, the SH-S223Q turned in some respectable times with DVD+R, DVD-R and DVD-RW media.

To check the media compatibility of the SH-S223Q, 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? 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 SHM-165H6S (firmware HS0E) 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-S223Q's writing quality was pretty good with most of the DVD+R media we tested. Aside from a few small spikes, the PI/PIF rates stayed well within acceptable limits.

While the writing quality was fairly good with Sony's 16x DVD-R media, the discs from Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim yielded some mixed results. When tested with KProbe, the error rates were a bit high through some sections of the disc. The worst results were with RiDATA's 16x DVD-R media. Looking at the graphs above, you can see that the error rates were very high when scanned with both KProbe and CD Speed.

To test the SH-S223Q's packet writing performance I used DLA 5.20. Verbatim 8x DVD+RW, Verbatim 6x DVD-RW and Maxell 12x DVD-RAM media were used once again.

The SH-S223Q had no problems holding its own when reading and writing to DVD-RW and DVD-RAM media. However, due to its Z-CLV writing method, it wasn't as fast as some of the other drives when writing to DVD+RW discs.

Double Layer DVD Write Tests - Nero Burning Rom 7.11.10.0:

To test the double layer DVD writing performance of the SH-S223Q, I used DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media from Verbatim and Memorex. I created about 8GB of random files and directories on my hard drive and then burned them to our test discs with Nero.

While the SH-S223Q is capable of writing to DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media at 16x and 12x, respectively, its speeds were limited to 10x with Verbatim's 8x DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL discs. The drive still performed very well, taking 13:11 to write 8001MB of data to DVD+R DL media and 13:46 to do the same with DVD-R DL discs.

Performance Revisited:

While Samsung's new "Super-WriteMaster" drive had a few rough spots, it performed fairly well throughout most of our tests. The SH-S223Q flew through our DVD writing tests, turning in some very good times with DVD±R, DVD±R DL and DVD-RAM media. Writing quality was an issue though, as the PI/PIF rates were a bit high with some media. Nevertheless, the SH-S223Q was fairly quick when reading DVD's. In our tests, it was able to read single layer DVD-ROM's and DVD±R discs at 16x and other types of recordable media at 12x.

Unfortunately, the SH-S223Q's performance wasn't as impressive when reading CD's. While the drive read pressed media at speeds near 48x, its CD-R and CD-RW read speeds were limited to only 40x.  The SH-S223Q also gave us some mixed results when writing CD's. The drive turned in some fairly good times when writing to CD-R discs. However, there were some writing quality issues and it would not packet write to CD-RW media at anything faster than 16x. With all things considered, the SH-S223Q gets a 6 out of 10 for the performance section of this review.