After being impressed by the GSA-4167B, I went into this review eager to see what LG's new "Super-Multi" drive could do. While the GSA-H10N has a few rough spots that need to be worked out, the drive offers a good mix of value, performance and features that should make it a big hit among consumers and enthusiasts alike.
It shouldn't be too surprising that what the GSA-H10N does best is write DVD's. Thanks to its P-CAV writing method, it took about five and a half minutes to write an entire 4.7GB DVD, beating even Plextor's 18x DVD±RW drive by a small margin. This level of performance carried over to our rewriting tests where the GSA-H10N turned in some very goodtimes with DVD-RW, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM media. Writing to DVD±R DL media wasn't a problem for LG's new drive either. Thanks to its 10x writing speed, the GSA-H10N took a little more than 14 minutes to burn 8GB of data.
With a drive like the GSA-H10N, 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. When it came to writing quality though, the GSA-H10N gave us some mixed results. While the PI/PIF rates were pretty good with most of the DVD±R media we tested, the jitter levels were higher than we'd like to see. This is a little concerning, as we didn't see anything like this with LG's previous drives. However, it did not seem to have any effect on readability.
LG's new "Super-Multi" drive also performed relatively well in our DVD read tests. Along with some fairly good seek times, the GSA-H10N was able to read single layer DVD-ROM's and DVD±R media at 16x. The drive also read DVD±RW discs at 13x and both DVD±R DL and DVD-RAM media at an impressive 12x, but slowed to 4.8x 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.
The GSA-H10N was also fairly quick when reading CD's. 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-H10N 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.
Like LG's previous "Super-Multi" drives, the GSA-H10N also has its share of features. 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-H10N 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. For what it offers, LG's new "Super-Multi" drive is surprisingly affordable. Available in your choice of black or beige, the the GSA-H10N can be picked up for less than $40 through some of the online vendors found on Pricegrabber.
| LG GSA-H10N 16x Super-Multi |
|
| Features: Installation: Performance: |
9 9 7 |
| Overall: | 8 |
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 10x
- Writes to DVD-R DL media at 6x
- Reads single layer DVD-ROM's at 16x
- Reads DVD±R media at 16x
- Reads DVD±RW media at 13x
- Reads DVD±R DL media at 12x
- Reads and writes DVD-RAM media at 12x
- Features 48x CD-R and 32x CD-RW writing 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
- Reads DVD-Videos at only 4.8x
- Cannot set the book type of DVD+RW media
- Cannot do write quality testing
- Has a 2048KB buffer
- Overburns to only 95:10
