| Review: LG GSA-4166B |
LGE '“ USA was gracious enough to send us their LG GSA-4166B Super multi DVD Writer. This drive supports 16x DVD+R/-R, 8x/6x DVD+RW/-RW, 5x DVD-RAM, 8x/4x DVD+R DL/-R DL writing and LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling.
Company information:
Let's take a look at some of the company information found at the LG website.
The Foundation of LG
LG was established in 1947 as Korea's first chemical company, also becoming the nation's first electronics company with its expansion into home appliances in 1958. The new Corporate Identity was launched including the change of the group name from Lucky-Goldstar to LG in 1995.
Business Fields
The wide array of activities that LG conducts is coordinated within three highly focused business sectors: Chemicals & Energy, Electronics and Telecommunications & Services. Each sector has undergone systematic changes, with improved financial compositions, restructured business portfolios and realigned equity investment structures.
The split of two holding companies LG Corp. and GS Holdings Corp.
On March 2003, LG introduced the holding company structure and recently, the demerger of two holding companies - LG Corp. and GS Holdings Corp. took place on July 1 to separate the manufacturing and technology related businesses from the service and retail operations. The separation is meant to maximize profits of LG shareholders by boosting business specialization of key LG companies.
Increasing R&D investment in 2004
With the anticipations and expectations for the new structure, LG has set an ambitious management goal for this year. In 2003, LG's ordinary profit stood at KRW 3.1 trillion on sales of KRW 85 trillion. In 2004, LG plans to raise ordinary profit and sales by 42% and 12% year-on-year respectively. This year's ordinary profit target is KRW 4.4 trillion and the sales target is KRW 95 trillion. LG plans to increase the R&D investments by 31% from last year to KRW 9.4 trillion in 2004.
If you are interested in reading more company information, please visit www.lg.co.kr/english
Drive specifications:
Now let's take a look at the specifications of the LG GSA-4166B, found at LG's website:
| Write Speed (DVD+R) | 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV, 12x PCAV, 16x CAV |
| Write Speed (DVD+R DL) | 2.4x , 4x CLV, 6x, 8x ZCLV |
| Write Speed (DVD-R) | 2x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV,12x PCAV, 16x CAV |
| Write Speed (DVD-R DL) | 4x CLV |
| Write Speed (DVD+RW) | 2.4x, 4x CLV, 8x ZCLV |
| Write Speed (DVD-RW) | 1x, 2x, 4xCLV, 6x ZCLV |
| Write Speed (DVD-RAM) | 2x, 3xCLV, 5x PCAV(Ver.2.0&Higher) |
| Write Speed (CD-R) | 16x CLV, 24xZCLV, 40x, 48x CAV |
| Write Speed (CD-RW) | 4x, 10x,16x CLV,24x,32x ZCLV |
| Read Speed (CD-ROM) | Max 48x |
| Read Speed (DVD-ROM) | Max 16x |
| Write Method(DVD-RAM) | Random write |
| Write Method(DVD-R/RW) | Disk-at-Once, Incremental Recording |
| Write Method(DVD+R) | Sequential Recording |
| Write Method(DVD+RW) | Random Write |
| Write Method(CD-R/RW) | Disk-at-Once, Track-at-Once |
| Data Transfer Rate(CD) | Max 7,200KB/s, DVD: Max 22.16 Mbytes/s |
| Access Time(CD) | CD: 120 ms, DVD-ROM(SL/DL) 140/175 ms, DVD-RAM 250 ms |
| Buffer Size | 2MB with buffer under run prevention technology |
| Loading Type | Motorized Tray |
| Interface Type | E-IDE / ATAPI |
| Compatible Formats Write | DVD-RAM, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, CD-R/RW |
| Compatible Formats Read | DVD-RAM, DVDR/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD-ROM |
| W x D x H | 146 x 165 x 41.3 mm |
| Weight | 770g+/-30g (Net) |
| OS | Windows 2000 Professional, XP Home Edition, XP Professional |
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
Bottom
Left Side
Right Side
Below you will see the contents of the retail box:
- The internal drive itself
- Nero 6 OEM Suite
- LG DVD Writer Solution CD:
1. PowerDVD
2. PowerProducer Gold
3. Nero Express
4. InCD
5. Acrobat Reader - Super Multi DVD Drive CD:
1. Owner's Manual - IDE cable
- Audio cable
- 4 mounting screws
- Quick Setup Guide
- Guarantee information
Now it's time to take a look at the drive itself:
On the front bezel we see an eject button, an emergency eject hole and a LED (green - for read and write - we prefer a different LED color though for writing). The logos located on the loading tray include the Super Multi logo, a DVD Alliance DVD+R DL logo, the LG logo, a DVD Forum DVD-Multi Recorder logo, a CD-RW Ultra Speed logo and the LightScribe Direct Disc Labeling logo.
Top
On top of the drive we found one sticker. In the bottom left corner we can see it was manufactured in China in December 2005.
Bottom
Back
On the back of the drive starting from the left, we can see a reserved connector; analogue audio connector; pins and jumper to set the drive to cable select, slave or master; IDE connector and finally the power connector.
We installed the drive without any problems and here is a screenshot from Nero InfoTool:
From the screenshot of Nero InfoTool we see lack of support for C2 Error reporting, Mount Rainier or CD+G. The drive provided was shipped with firmware 1.02 installed.
From the 'Choose Recorder' screen of Nero Burning ROM we also see that the drive supports Bitsetting to DVD-ROM:
Let's continue the review and see how the drive performs.
On the next page we will take a look at the test machine, the software, the drive features…………
