CD Freaks Presents: Optiarc AD-7200A DVD Burner Review

Really, ??
Cause if you go to optiarc europe website the 7200 drive specs say that +R DL is supported @ 8x & -R DL is supported @ 12x
http://www.sonynec-optiarc.com/produ...rw/ad7200.html

At least the drive allows writing DVD+R DL at 12x if you manually patch the firmwares. This does not mean that there will ever be an official firmware for this.

May I ask you a question, Dee-27?
Does this drive still have the "feature" of lighting up the "hard drive activity" LED, or have they finally fixed it (thus doing away with the need to cut the 39th conductor)?

so this burner is good, support jitter ?

It lights the Hard Drive LED on this system, as does the Pioneer and Lite-On drives in the same system.


@TEDY
Yes, it's an excellent drive, it doesn't report jitter while scanning though.

Hi, this is going to probably sound stupid, but which is a better driver, this or the Pioneer DVR-115? I a planning on getting a new drive, and I'm coming from an old NEC 3500-AG, so I've been out of the DVD drive scene for quite a while. I have read both reviews, and I still cant seem to decide lol. The only thing I will be using this for is backing up large data sets to DVD's, and the only DVD's that I use are Taiyo Yuden 16x's or Verbatim DVD+/-R 16x, so I am wondering which of thses drives will perform better on that media, I dont really care for any others because I wont use it, also I will use Verbatim DVD+R DL's so umm which might be better? And which of the two is quiter?

Thank you for any input.

@JRKS247
After reading the review on AD-7200 and going through this forum, I'd go for the AD-7200.

Nice review Dee!

I like the drive, but am having one major issue with it. I use Mondo/mindi to restore a linux partition and after the partition is restored I use the drive to load the customer app, it shows the cd to be blank media. It works fine on a AD-7190...

Still love the drive besides this issue.

Or you could wait for the DVR-116.

how is it's performance reading discs of not so good condition, like scratched, dirty? last time i was looking for a dvd burner, i remember NECs were notorious for their poor results in this area.

Nec driver are not made to do quality scanning unless you just want to kill time the results are not reliable

i'm going to today to get a Sony-V200S (rebadged optiarc 7200S)
i wonder if crossflashing it will add any thing to the drive or shall i leave it with the sony firmware??

They should be the same, since it's the same hardware, i doubt that sony had improved anything.

Hi all,

I have been out of the CD/DVD burner scene for a while, but suddenly find myself shopping for a new one.

I am needing a beige drive. Could anybody tell me if this is the drive to which this thread is referring? link

Yes it is.

Thanks.

The whole Sony-NEC-Optiarc naming scheme is throwing me off. This is new to me because I thought they were 3 separate companies. But I wanted to be sure there weren't variations of this drive - say one by Sony, one by NEC, then a hybrid of some sort by Sony/NEC.

Any proof behind that or just shakin' the air?

Just general consensus after seeing a few people's comparisons. The 520x/720x drives are closer to being reliable, but still not completely trusted.

How good is the Optiarc AD-7200 at writing CD-Rs?

I am looking for another good CD writing drive for a spare computer. I have a Samsung SH-S202N in my main computer which I find an excellent CD writer, probably the best I have ever owned. But I would prefer the new drive not to be Mediatek based because of the C2 error problem when writing multi-session CDs. Also the results with Verbatim DL+ CDs although good are not as good as the NEC drives (4550/1 & 4570/1) that I briefly had a couple of years ago.

There are some CD scans posted in the Optiarc AD-7200A/S and AD-7201A/S Results & Discussion thread, but they are mostly scanned on Lite-On CD writers (which I don't trust any more). There are a few Benq & Plextor scans, but as the discs used were from manufacturers whose quality varies so much (Ritek, CMC) the mediocre result could be due to the disc rather than the drive.

P.S.
In case you are interested all three (or four) of the NEC drives I had before were faulty on arrival. The first, a 4550, couldn't read or write DVD-Ram discs. I spent 3 months trying to fix what I assumed was a software problem before sending it back. When the technical support department came back from a month's holiday they confirmed it was the drive. The second drive, a 4571, just couldn't finalise any CDs. I can't remember what was wrong with the third (a 4570 I think). And the last drive, a 4551, had a front that was so deformed in one corner that it wouldn't fit into my case. Rather unlucky I would say.

From what i have seen the optiarc is much better than the new samsung and liteon drives, so far i have only burned audio cd's and they play fine with my old teac cd player.

I have a done a few cd scans with many drives, liteon/samsung/nec/benq have a look. also at here.

I've only burned two CD-Rs to test my Optiarc AD-7203A when I got it and the results were very good based on BenQ DW1655 and Optiarc AD-7203A scans. They were one Plextor (Taiyo Yuden) and one Verbatim Super AZO (Made in India).

Plextor branded Taiyo Yuden 48x CD-R burned at 48x:

48x Optiarc AD-7203A 1.05 Advanced DQ (BenQ 1655) @32x (1st burn).png
48x Optiarc AD-7203A 1.05 Disc Quality (Optiarc 7203) @40x (1st burn).png

Verbatim Super AZO Crystal 52x CD-R Made in India burned at 48x:

48x Optiarc AD-7203A 1.05 Advanced DQ (BenQ 1655) @32x (1st burn) Verb.png
48x Optiarc AD-7203A 1.05 Disc Quality (Optiarc 7203) @40x (1st burn) Verb.png

Thank you Vroom and DrageMester.

I saw Vroom's scans on the Optiarc AD-7200 Results & Discussion thread. My own experience of Ritek CD-Rs is that the quality varies so much from pack to pack that I could not come to a conclusion about the drive's writing quality. I would expect a C1 average of ~1-2 from a good pack of Ritek and anything from 7 to 30+ from a not so good pack. If the discs are not Ritek's finest then the Optiarc has done a good job, I always get some E22 errors and frequently a few E32 as well.

What I did find particularly useful with your scans Vroom was being able to see how an Optiarc AD-7200 scan compared to a (real) Benq. I am hoping that an Optiarc might prove to be a useful enough CD scanner to reduce the workload on my Benq.

Are the new Samsungs that you refer to the 22x models? I have a 20x SH-S202N which is the best CD writer I have had in a long time. If the 22x models are not as good then I might have to stock up with a few more SH-202x just in case.

And DrageMester, you must be a mind reader. How did you know that the two CDs I most wanted to see Benq scans of were Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim AZO? And with Optiarc scans as well. As I said last weekend after you did that translation for me, is there anything you can't do?

The CD writing quality looks good of the Optiarc looks satisfactory, both scans are similar to what I would expect from my Samsung. So it looks like the Optiarc is the drive for me, the Labelflash AD-7203A if I can find one (although I will probably never use Labelflash its nice to have the option).

Having now read Dee's review of the Samsung SH-S223F I can see what you mean Vroom. I think I might have to get a couple of spare SH-S202x drives after all. The CD writing quality of the SH-S223F is shocking considering how good Samsung's 20x & 18x models were. And it's not even that good with DVDs. I can only hope that it was either a defective drive or some alpha test firmware that was released by mistake, if not then the future is very bleak.

Dee, does it do scans?

Hi
Yes, they are shown on the Authors page in the review. It seems quite a reasonable scanning drive, certainly much more consistent than the older Optiarc drives.