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Review: NU HDW-164 Reviewer: Jan70 Provided by: NU Taiwan Firmware: 15QF & 16QF Manufactured: N/A |
New Universe
Technology Inc., Taiwan, was kind enough to send us their latest external
DVD-writer the NU HDW-164. This drive supports 16x DVD+R/-R writing, 4x
DVD+RW/-RW and 4x DVD+R9 DL writing technology - allowing dual layer discs of
8.5Gb to be written.
Company
information:
Let us take a look
at some of the company information found at the global New Universe Technology
Inc. site.
Overview
Nu
Technology Inc. is founded in May of 2003 by Quanta Computer (one of the best
Notebook IT groups worldwide) and Quanta Storage Inc. Located in the center of
the Silicon Valley; we are an optical storage drive manufacturer. Our company is
proud to produce a full range of both internal and external, Half-Height and
Slim optical storage products. Some of our internal and external optical
products include IDE CD/DVD ROM, CD re-writer, CDRW plus DVD combo drive, and
DVD writers.
Products
In order to
meet the fast growing demand of mobile storage devices, Nu Technology has
developed the world's first slim DVD writer, and slim CDRW DVD combo drive. Our
strong R&D department and large production capacity is the reason why we get
ahead of our competitors and produce the world's fastest slim USB CDRW DVD combo
drive. On top of all, Nu Technology also released the world's first 52X combo
drive for both internal IDE and external USB interface.
News
In
September of 2003, our company unveiled the 8X IDE DVD-RW drive and the world's
slimmest 4X External DVD-RW drive.
Mission
Our mission
is to be the leader and transform the industry with external slim drives that
offer the most advanced technology, along with a user-friendly interface, and
stylish exterior design. Nu Technology is dedicated to offer fast and excellent
service to our customers. We stand behind our products? superior quality and
their unbeatable prices.
R&D
Focus
NU has 161
employees, of whom about 60, or 37%, are in the R&D division. The R&D
team is split into mechanical design, testing, and circuit design groups. Of the
R&D team members, 40, or 67%, are dedicated to firmware development (versus
20'“30 at other Taiwanese ODD producers), and 20, or 33%, to mechanical and
hardware design.
Product Road
Map
NU has been
dedicated to developing slim-type optical storage disk drives. However, it will
also engage in half height DVD-RW/Combo for desktop PCs to leverage its R&D
resources and fully utilize its manufacturing capacity. In addition to HH ODDs,
the company expects to launch portable DVD players in 2003 by providing engines
(loaded with PCB boards) to Chinese distributors. However, we believe that the
contribution from new products other than slim ODDs will remain small for the
next two years. As slim Combo speed migration is likely to top out at 24x, the
company aims to enhance the product features through ultra slim, slot-in, or
even expansion into car applications, a segment now dominated by Japanese
vendors.
If you are
interested in reading more company information, please visit:
Drive specifications:
The official
listed specification of this drive was found on the Global NU Tech.
website:
Dimension |
23.3 x 16.3 |
Weight |
1.49 |
Introduction |
The HDW-164 |
Features And |
write speed |
Leading Edge |
Portable |
Minimum |
Recommended |
Warranty And |
Warrants |
What's inside the
box?
On this page
we will take a look at what the drive came shipped with and take a look at the
drive and its technology.
Front
Back
Top
Left side
Right Side
Below you will
see the contents of the retail box:
- The
external drive itself - AC/DC Power
adapter - Power
supply cable (USA connector) - USB 2.0 Cable
- Nero Express 6 OEM +
Drive Manual - Quick
Installation Guide
Now it's time
to take a look at the drive itself:
A standard
black bezel with only one logo - the DVD+R9 DL. headphone connector and volume
knob is missing. The drive uses one small coloured led (green) for read and
write (we prefer a different led colour though for writing).
Top
Underside
On the
underside of the external case we found one sticker and we can read it was made
in China.
On the back of
the drive from left to right: Audio out connector, USB2.0 connector and power
connector. (On and off switch is missing).
We installed
the drive without any problems and here is a screenshot from Nero
InfoTool:
From the
screenshot of Nero InfoTool above, we miss Mt.Rainier support and a larger
buffer size. Our drive came shipped with firmware 15QF and was updated to the
latest available verison 16QF.
And another
shot from Nero Burning ROM:
We do not
really find anything alarming here, but Mount Rainier and a larger buffer would
have been nice.
But let us continue
this review and see how it really performs.
On the next page we
will take a look at the test machine, the software, the drive features and the
included software…………