Like the GSA-4163B before it, the GSA-4167B has had its share of growing pains. People that picked up the drive right away quickly found out that its writing quality wasn't as good as some of LG's previous "Super-Multi" drives. Thankfully, LG was quick to respond, releasing a couple of updates for the GSA-4167B. The new firmware fixed many of the problems people were seeing, turning the GSA-4167B into a pretty decent drive. However, as you saw in this review, there are still a few rough spots that need to be worked out.
The GSA-4167B performed very well when writing to DVD+R and DVD-R media at 16x. Thanks to its P-CAV writing method, it took only five and a half minutes to write an entire 4.7GB DVD. LG's new drive also did pretty well in our rewriting tests, turning in some impressive times with DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM media. Unfortunately, the GSA-4167B wasn't as fast as some of the other drives when writing to DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL media. While LG has tried to narrow this performance gap, we could not get the drive to write to DVD+R DL media at 8x, even though this speed is supposedly supported in the DL12 firmware.
With a drive like the GSA-4167B, media compatibility and writing quality are just as important as speed. Fortunately, finding DVD±R media that would work at 16x really wasn't an issue. The drive wrote to most of our test media at its rated speeds and was even able to write to some 8x DVD+R discs at 12x. The GSA-4167B's writing quality was also fairly good for the most part. However, there's still room for improvement, especially with Philips 16x DVD+R and Ritek DVD-R DL media. Hopefully LG can tweak this in a future firmware update.
LG's new "Super-Multi" drive also performed relatively well in our DVD read tests. Along with some fairly good seek times, the GSA-4167B was able to read single layer DVD-ROM's at 16x, DVD±R discs at 10x and both DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at a respectable 8x. Unfortunately, it 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 CD's wasn't a problem for the GSA-4167B either. In our tests, the drive read pressed and CD-R media at speeds near 48x and CD-RW discs at 40x. This level of performance carried over to our DAE tests, where the drive ripped audio CD's at 40x. As a writer, the GSA-4167B performed reasonably well. It had no problems holding its own in our rewriting tests. However, due to its Z-CLV writing method, it wasn't as fast as some of the other drives when writing to CD-R media. Nevertheless, its writing quality was quite good.
When it comes to features, the GSA-4167B is very similar to LG's previous "Super-Multi" drives. 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. While this buffer is a little smaller than what we'd like to see on a 16x DVD writer, this system worked flawlessly in our tests. The GSA-4167B 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 and DVD+R DL media. To top it all off, LG has included an interesting mix of software from Nero and CyberLink.
In the end, it usually comes down to price. Fortunately, the GSA-4167B is one of the more affordable 16x DVD±RW drives currently available. Available in your choice of black or beige, the the drive can be picked up for less than $50 through some of the online vendors found on Pricegrabber.
| LG GSA-4166B 16x Super-Multi |
|
| Features: Installation: Performance: |
9 9 8 |
| Overall: | 9 |
Highs:
- Writes to 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 6x
- Writes to DVD-R DL media at 4x
- Reads single layer DVD-ROM's at 16x
- Reads DVD±R media at 10x
- Reads DVD±RW and DVD±R DL media at 8x
- Reads and writes DVD-RAM media at 5x
- Features 48x CD-R and 32x CD-RW writing speeds
- Excellent DAE speeds
- Features Super Link buffer underrun protection
- Good CD writing quality
- Includes software from Nero and CyberLink
- Supports bitsetting for DVD+R and DVD+R DL media
- Affordably priced
Lows:
- Questionable writing quality with some DVD+R and DVD±R DL media
- Had a hard time reaching its rated speeds when reading pressed and CD-R discs
- Wasn't able to write to Verbatim 8x DVD+R DL media at 8x
- Reads DVD-Videos at only 5x
- Cannot set the book type of DVD+RW media
- Cannot do write quality testing
- Has a 2048KB buffer
- Overburns to only 95:10
