CD Freaks presents: The Sony DRX-S70U Slim-Line External Burner Review

[_KIPPER]

CD Freaks presents: The Sony DRX-S70U Slim-Line External Burner Review

The full review can be viewed here.

as always your comments and discussions are welcome in this thread.

[alan1476]

Great review Kip, is this a rebadged Sony? I bet it works great. Everytime I read one of your reviews I want to buy the drive, if anyone needs a portable, I guess this is the one to buy. Great work.

[Bob]

[QUOTE=alan1476;2055777]is this a rebadged Sony?[/QUOTE]A Sony Sony? Optiarc 7540A rebadge according to the DVD-RAM write test.

Thanks for the review Kipper!

[_KIPPER]

Thanks guys; yes it is an Optiarc drive

[Albert]

Wasn’t the DRX-S50U the same Optiarc drive?

I wonder why two Sony model numbers for the same Optiarc drive…

[_KIPPER]

Good question Albert.

I think there were some upgrades to the internals of the drive and Sony reworked the exterior. I no longer have the S50; gave it to my daughter out of state but I believe the S70 performs better.

[cd_pirate]

A few of those +R burns were horrid. 14,000 total PIF in one of them (It totally crapped out on a Sony disc too, which is quite dumb considering the drive is wearing the Sony brand name). That’s far below average IMO. -R seemed promising though.

I’d like to know why you used a liteon CD-R writer to scan CD-Rs when you have a BenQ drive that reports more detailed information, like jitter?

[_KIPPER]

[QUOTE=cd pirate;2055934]A few of those +R burns were horrid. 14,000 total PIF in one of them (It totally crapped out on a Sony disc too, which is quite dumb considering the drive is wearing the Sony brand name). That’s far below average IMO. -R seemed promising though.

I’d like to know why you used a liteon CD-R writer to scan CD-Rs when you have a BenQ drive that reports more detailed information, like jitter?[/QUOTE]

If you looked over a few of my previous reviews you may have noticed that I did use the BenQ with advanced quality scans for the CD-R portion, however the team as a whole has set the standard for reviews which is that we will use the Lite-On CDRW drives from now on.

[cd_pirate]

Dunno what the advantage of using an inferior scanner would be. Thought it would make sense to use the same drive for both DVD and CD scanning. Nothing against you though, I thought it was your personal preference to use the cdrw drive for scanning but it’s not. I see Dee27 has used it for her latest review also. Oh well, at least DVDs are scanned with jitter

[delerue]

On a slightly related note, how do one find out the brand of the drive in a rebadged burner? I don’t have Nero and have just purchased a SONY external burner (DRX-840U).

Please advise!