Sony BDX-S600U Portable 6x Blu-ray Disc Writer

CD Write and ReWrite Tests - Nero Burning Rom 9.4.26.0 and InstantBurn 5:

For this test I randomly generated 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 BDX-S600U has a maximum CD writing speed of 24x. To reach this speed, it uses Z-CLV, or Zone CLV. By looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the drive uses a total of five "zones." The BDX-S600U starts writing at 8x and quickly jumps to 12x at the 5 minute mark. When it reaches the 21 minute mark, the drive changes to 16x and then to 20x at the 43 minute mark. The drive writes at this speed until about the 67 minute mark. When it reaches this point, its writing speed increases to 24x and stays there until the end of the session.

To test the drive's writing times,  I wrote our test data to some Taiyo Yuden media rated at 52x. The results are below.

The BDX-S600U took a little more than six minutes to write an entire 701MB CD. While most of the internal writers we've looked at lately can do this in half the time, this is fairly good for a portable drive.

To test the drive's writing quality I used Nero CD Speed. This utility can be used to test the number of C1 and C2 errors as well as the jitter level on a disc. For these tests I used a Lite-On LTR-52327S and read the discs at 32x. 

HP 52x (CMC)

MBI 52x

Taiyo Yuden 52x

The BDX-S600U's writing quality was very good. By looking at the screenshots, you can see that the discs burned by the drive had a low number of C1 errors. More importantly, 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 InstantBurn from CyberLink.. Verbatim's 24x Ultra Speed CD-RW media was used for these tests.

The BDX-S600U also uses Z-CLV when rewriting at 16x. The drive starts writing at 8x and jumps to 12x at about the 5 minute mark. The BDX-S600U writes at this speed until about the 21 minute mark. When it reaches this point, its writing speed increases to 16x and stays there until the end of the session.

Sony's portable DVD writer did fairly well in our rewriting tests. The drive took 4:10 to write 400MB with Nero and 3:52 to do the same with InstantBurn. Erasing wasn't a problem for the BDX-S600U either. In our tests, it took 25 seconds to do a quick erase and 6:22 to fully erase the disc.