CD Freaks Presents: The Lite-On LH-20A1S Mini Review

CD Freaks are proud to present. The Lite-On LH-20A1S Mini Review


You can read the review here

Please feel free to comment on the review in this forum thread

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Last edited by Dee; 17-06-2007 at 15:11.

Nice one, thanks!

Regards,
TerminalVeloCD

No more BenQ AFCS chassis? Has this been seen on newer LH-20A1P/H as well? Or are they just using whatever inventory they have?

Thanks Dee. Another good one

Very nice results!

Lite-On rocks. I suppose those bugs with DVD-R/DL & DVD-RAM will be eliminated soon in next firmwares. By the way these types of media are rather uncommon.

Thank you very much for excellent preview.

Thanks Dee-27 for this nice review.
Exactly the same as with SH-16A7S, linky.
Seems these drives use same hardware, even PCB revision is the same...

Thanks for the interesting mini review, Dee!

Nice review


Been using one of these drives for over 2 months the only problem I have come across was using 16x DVD-R Pro infiniti disc's brought 100, burnt about 5 binned 25 and gave the rest to my brother.

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Last edited by alferret; 17-06-2007 at 23:26.

Nice mini review Dee

That coincides with the fact that the chassis/top covers are the same as well (and unlike the LH-PATA drives). So what's in the way of a crossflash...

Some of the older Lite-On Sony rebadged drives had a SONY PCB inside as well (but now it's not a in a rebadge...)

Overall a very nice mini-review. Your test machine is up in stratosphere.
Some of the writing results looked most impressive though.
I do have a few very minor suggestions:
1. In the "Features" section: it was quite nice to see 3 screenshots of CD-DVD Speed DQ tests at 4X, 8X, & 16 speeds using the test drive. Is it possible in the future to include at least one CDS "Statistics" window shot as well(for drives that can perform DQ tests)?
2. In the "Writing Performance" sections" : I believe most members know that Taiyo Yuden media is Made in Japan. But for the other media types used in the review tests, is it possible to include the country of manufacture as well? Made in India, Made in Taiwan, etc.
I don't think either of these inclusions would use much space, even in a "mini-review".

Hi
Nice review.

But see what this guy is saying about the product launched in India ! (see below)
Is he saying or rating (68) it right ?Or we will assume he is a fan of other brand ?
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(http://www.pcworld.in/review/article.../secId=3342337)

We generally are all praise for Lite-On products – they burn discs fast and are competitively priced. But this time around with Lite-On’s 20x SATA drive, when we put the drive to DVD RW burning test, we were surprised by its inability to burn common media (the primary reason for a low PC World score).

The drive refused to write to the Moser Baer and HP DVD + RW media. It is rather surprising that a drive launched in India does not support one of the most commonly available media here. Finally, we got a Sony DVD+RW with which the drive was happy.

Now, moving on to things that this drive can do, it is as fast as its IDE companion (that we reviewed in the April 2007 issue) in most tests, taking a little over 5 minutes to burn 4.1 GB of data at 20x on 16x rated Moser Baer media.

Burning a dual layer disk (Verbatim media) took 27 minutes – the only area in which we have seen Lite-On drive get slower than others. CD Writing was brisk at 160 seconds for burning a 700MB ISO file and is one of the fastest times we have seen. When we finally did manage to get a DVD+RW written, it was again on par with the 20x IDE version, at 7 minutes for a 4.1 GB burn.

The SATA version of the fast 20x writer makes great sense if you are buying an Intel motherboard that does not have IDE ports, or if you have a slim cabinet in which cable clutter is an issue. Or, for someone whose board has only one IDE channel which is already occupied, a SATA optical drive is a good buy (provided the incompatibility issue is resolved or if you can stock Sony’s RWs!). For anybody else, the extra money you pay for it is not justifiable as performance wise there is little to tell between the 20x IDE and SATA versions.

@all
Thanks for the comments.

@uSerKey
That should not be to much extra work. I'll put that proposal to the rest of the review team and see what they think.

@CDDVDFreaks
The review in your link does not present any tests.

Thanks Dee-27,
Nice to know you mods are listening to us rookie burners.

I just bough the OEM version (sold by UK resellers and germany sellers as a Liteone drive) but windows does not show it as a LiteOn drive nor can I flash it

see here: ATAPI DVD A DH20A1S = LiteOn LH-20A1S http://club.cdfreaks.com/showthread....75#post1850437

Good review. I needed a SATA writter so I got this one. Thanks.

Lite-On Combines 20x DVD Writing, LightScribe, And SATA In One Drive

LightScribe is not an important feature for me ,
nowadays I am searching for lite-on drivers but in my country you can not find lite-on
I will buy an optiarc/nec drive.
thnx for review.

Thanks for the review! 1 question, is there a difference between LH-20A1S and SH-20A1S? Because i can only get SH-20A1S and on the lite-on site i only see firmware for the LH-20A1S......... strange? Or two different types?

Ps. This is the one i want to buy http://www.alternate.nl/html/product...l?artno=CEBL56

And to add to the confusion.. What are the LH-20A1S-12 and LH-20A1S-15? I see both for sale but no reference to them anywhere, including on LiteOnIT.com.

Hello! I bought my LH20A1S in November 2007 and am using the SATA connection but I have been encountering problems during playback of movies on the drive. At some random point in the movie the drive begins to "click" and it just stops playing. I also have a Liteon external dvdrw drive and that one plays back movies perfectly.

Can you do a TRT on nero cd speed and check in the end what's your drive burst? It might be some Sata driver needed to install, at least when i instaled my burner on the sata port, i've only reached 2.4x on reading speed, so i picked up the motherboard cd and instaled the sata drivers, and now it works perfectly.

Hi rakter!

I've performed the TRT scan as you recommended and the result is posted in another thread, the link to which is below:

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f7/liteon-lh20a1s-movied-dvd-read-error-236072/

Hope you can take a look at it and give your suggestions on how to fix the problem.

Thanks a lot!