Sony BWU-300S 8x Blu-ray Disc Writer

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

To test the DVD writing performance of Sony's new drive I used Verbatim 16x DVD+R, 16x DVD-R, 6x DVD-RW and 8x 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 BWU-300S uses CAV. By looking at the screenshots above, you can see that Sony's new drive starts writing at about 6.7x and accelerates, reaching its maximum speed at the end of the disc.

The BWU-300S 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.

The BWU-300S performed very well in our DVD writing tests. While not as fast as some of the 20x and 22x DVD writers we've looked at recently, it turned in some impressive times with DVD±R and DVD±RW media.

To check the media compatibility of the BWU-300S, 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 BWU-300S's writing quality was pretty good with most of the DVD+R media we tested. Aside from a few isolated spikes, the PI/PIF rates stayed within acceptable limits. The only real exception was Memorex's 16x DVD+R media. When scanned with the BenQ DW1640, the PI rate was pretty high throughout the second half of the disc.

Lastly, here are some results from our DVD-R test media. With the exception of RiDATA's 16x DVD-R media, the PI/PIF rates remained well  within acceptable limits when tested with both KProbe and CD Speed.

To test the BWU-300S's packet writing performance I used DLA 5.20. Verbatim 8x DVD+RW, Verbatim 6x DVD-RW and Maxell 5x DVD-RAM media were used once again.

The BWU-300S performed fairly well in our packet writing tests. While not the fastest drive we've tested, it turned in some respectable times when reading and writing to DVD+RW, DVD-RW and DVD-RAM media.

Double Layer DVD Write Tests - Nero Burning Rom 7.11.10.0:

To test the double layer DVD writing performance of the BWU-300S, 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.

The BWU-300S had no problems taking the top spot in this test. Thanks to its P-CAV writing method, the drive took 16:34 to write 8001MB of data to DVD+R DL media and 17:14 to do the same with DVD-R DL discs. So what about writing quality? Take a look below.

The writing quality was pretty good with Verbatim's DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media. Aside from a few small spikes, the PI/PIF rates stayed within acceptable limits. Unfortunately, the results weren't as good with Memorex's 8x DVD+R DL media. When tested with KProbe, there was a large error spike at the layer change which caused some readability problems.