Over the last few years, we've taken a look at a number of ASUS's DVD writers. While many of them impressed us, others didn't perform as well as we would have liked. Fortunately, the DRW-1608P3S falls into the first category rather than the latter. Based on the Pioneer DVR-111, ASUS's new drive offers a good mix of performance and features at an affordable price.
Like its Pioneer counterpart, the DRW-1608P3S can write to 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. ASUS's new DVD writer also did pretty well in our rewriting tests, turning in some respectable times with DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM media. Most impressive though was the DRW-1608P3S's DVD±R DL writing performance. Thanks to its 8x writing speed, the drive took less than 17 minutes to burn an entire 8.5GB DVD.
When it came to media compatibility, the DRW-1608P3S gave us some mixed results. While the drive wrote to all of our DVD-R media at its rated speeds, finding DVD+R discs that would work at 16x was not an easy task. In most cases, the writing speed was limited to only 12x. On the other hand, the DRW-1608P3S's writing quality was, for the most part, pretty good. However, there's still room for improvement, especially with Optodisc 16x DVD+R and RiDATA DVD-R DL media. Hopefully ASUS can tweak this in a future firmware update.
The DRW-1608P3S also performed relatively well in our DVD read tests. Along with some fairly good seek times, the drive was able to read single layer DVD-ROM's at 16x, DVD±R discs at 12x and both DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at a respectable 8x. Unfortunately, the DRW-1608P3S slowed to only 5x when reading DVD-Videos. While this doesn't have any effect on movie playback, there are better drives out there if you want to rip DVD movies.
Reading and writing CD's wasn't a problem for the DRW-1608P3S either. In our tests, the drive read pressed and CD-R media at speeds as high as 41x and CD-RW discs at 32x. It also did fairly well when ripping audio CD's, reaching DAE speeds as high as 41x. As a writer, the DRW-1608P3S performed as expected. While the drive's 40x CD-R writing speed did put it at a disadvantage in some of our tests, its writing quality was very good.
When it comes to features, the DRW-1608P3S is very similar to ASUS's previous DVD writers. Along with a 2MB buffer, the drive supports things like ASUS's FlextraLink, FlextraSpeed and DDSS II technologies. The DRW-1608P3S also offers a good number of writing and rewriting speeds to choose from and automatically sets the book type when writing to DVD+R DL discs. Unfortunately, it won't let you do the same with DVD+R or DVD+RW media. Last but not least, ASUS has included a great software software bundle from Nero and Ulead.
In the end, it usually comes down to price. Fortunately, the DRW-1608P3S is one of the more affordable 16x DVD±RW drives currently available. Available in your choice of black, silver or beige, the retail version of the drive can be picked up for less than $50 through some of the online vendors found on Pricegrabber.
| ASUS DRW-1608P3S 16x DVD±RW/RAM |
|
| Features: Installation: Performance: |
8 7 8 |
| Overall: | 8 |
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 and DVD-R DL media at 8x
- Reads single layer DVD-ROM's at 16x
- Reads DVD±R media at 12x
- Reads DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at 8x
- Reads and writes to DVD-RAM media at 5x
- Features 40x CD-R and 32x CD-RW writing speeds
- Good selection of writing and rewriting speeds
- Supports ASUS's FlextraLink, FlextraSpeed and DDSS II technologies
- Automatically sets book type to DVD-ROM for DVD+R DL media
- Includes software from Nero, Ulead and ASUS
- Affordably priced
Lows:
- Reads DVD videos at only 5x
- Cannot set the book type of DVD+R or DVD+RW media
- Documentation could be better
- Only a 2000KB buffer
- No digital audio output
- Overburns to only 94:27
