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| Review: ASUS DRW-1604P |
ASUS recently sent us their DRW-1604P drive, which is a 16X speed, Dual Format, Double Layer, DVD recorder. This drive is based on the popular Pioneer DVR-108 drive. The name ASUS is very familiar to most people due to the companies well known computer products and peripherals. Asus is especially known for their portfolio of motherboard and video card products. The DRW-1604P is one of their latest DVD writers, but how does it perform? We'll find out in this article by running the drive through numerous tests and by analysing its performance with a multitude of various media.
Company information:
We found the following information on the ASUS website;
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Drive specifications:
We also found the following specifications on the ASUS website:
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FlextraLink™ - Buffer Underrun Errors Prevention Technology 
FlextraSpeed™ - Optimal Writing Speed Adjustment Technology 
What's inside the box?
Here we take a look at the ASUS DRW-1604P retail package and the contents included in the bundle.
The box has a snazzy design that highlights the 16x16 DVD±R capabilities and the 4X Double Layer writing ability. Next, we opened up the box and arranged all of the contents for easy viewing.
Let us look over the contents of the retail package.
The box contains;
- The DRW-1604P drive
- One emergency eject pin
- One 80 wire IDE cable
- Mounting screws
- Quick Installation Guide
- User Guide (Product manual)
- Nero OEM suite CD-ROM
- Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 Suite SE CD-ROM
- Audio cable
- ASUS motherboard flyer
This is a pretty nice bundle. Including both Nero and Ulead software packages gives the end-user the flexibility to choose their favorite CD/DVD software. The only thing we miss is one included blank DVD±R disc and preferably also one DVD rewriteable disc. The Quick Installation guide uses very tiny text and only contains one small picture. Luckily, the included full User Guide contains better instructions and detailed pictures that will help novice users get the drive installed.
Now we shall take a closer look at the drive itself.
Notice the indented line and the contours on the drive tray. This gives the drive a unique and interesting appearance. What else is on the front of the drive? On the left-side and underneath the drive tray there is an emergency eject hole, to the right there is an LED indicator, and then at the far right is the eject button. For graphics, we have the ASUS logo printed on the center of the drive tray. Underneath the drive tray from left to right we have a DVD+R DL logo, a DVD Alliance (DVD+R/RW) logo, a DVD Forum (DVD-R/RW) logo, and finally a Compact Disc Ultra Speed ReWriteable logo.
Starting from the left of the back of the drive we have; one undocumented connection; analog audio connector; pins and jumper to set the drive to cable select, slave or master; IDE connector and finally the power connector. There is no digital audio connector.
Above we have a view of the top
of the drive with 2 stickers placed on it. We can see that the drive was made in
China. The drive was manufactured in either October 2004 or November
2004 depending on which sticker you want to believe.
On the next page we will take a look at the test machine testing software, drive features and the included software…
