discussion ASUS DRW-2014L1T DVD±/RW DRIVE with LightScribe Review

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DVD-ROM Testing

DVD-ROM Testing

Our last victim of the day was a DVD-ROM disk with Half Life: The Collectors Edition on it. Once again the ASUS was faster, but this time by only 4%. Access times are now on 24ms and CPU usages are back to 60% better for the ASUS drive. This time we for tripled the burst rate! 75MB/s!

 

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Blank DVD-R Testing

Blank DVD-R Testing

The blank DVD-R could only go for a speed test since you can't measure access times or CPU usage times/percentages if there is no data. Right? The ASUS DRW-2014L1T is this time faster by 15%

 

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LightScribe Burning

LightScribe Burning

Invented by Hewlett-Packard, LightScribe technology is simply used to burn images on top of a CD/DVD so we do not have to use labels anymore. The laser inside a CD/DVD disc drive with LightScribe technology focuses light energy onto a thin reactive dye coating on the label side of the disc. Only LightScribe media has this special coating and as mentioned before, this makes Lightscribe media more expensive. The light from the laser causes a chemical change in the dye coating that shows up on the disc. With laser precision, the drive renders the text and images that you created for the label.

There are three different layout modes for burning labels:

• Full mode. Although it takes longer, this is the mode to used for a full-disc image.
• Content mode. Perfect for creating artful borders around the center of the disc.
• Title mode. Great for a small amount of text or graphics. This is the quickest mode.

LightScribe labels burn in concentric circles, moving outward from the center of the disc. Images with the largest diameters will take longest to burn.

If only I would have looked a little closer at burning times. Want to know why? Well, I don’t like waiting so when I saw that those 4 little pictures were going to take 15 minutes, let’s just say I wasn’t too happy but in the end, the wait was worth it.

The LightScribe website gives you some advice on the burning process; if you want the pictures to come out nice and dark, you’ll have to repeat the entire process. I suppose that the dye on the disc will color darker equal to the times you burn the picture(s) on it. The end result is a nice clean disc layout without stickers (that could cause vibrations) or sloppy handwriting. It is actually pretty impressive to see and you can make some interesting labels but it does take quite a bit of time and the media is more expensive.

 

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Conclusion

Conclusion

This ASUS drive surprised us with its composure in all of the tests we put it through and it showed that it is ready for prime time. Even though it was compared to a BenQ drive that is almost two years old, its performance in the access time tests was a testament to ASUS's strive towards engineering excellence. Even with the performance numbers we saw across all media types, the CPU usage numbers were nothing short of spectacular at less than half of what the BenQ drive required. Mention also has to be made about the broad disk compatibility offered by the DRW-2014L1T and the fact that it has LightScribe. While the usefulness of LightScribe may be lost on some consumers, others find it to be a great tool for labeling and archiving DVDs.

We also like that this drive comes in full retail packaging where many other drives we see at the larger etailers here in Canada are OEM only and come without any software. It is also good to see that ASUS packaged a replacement faceplate with this drive since this gives the user the option to change the viewable color of their drive if they happen to switch cases. The fact that it is very silent even while running at top speeds is yet another very positive point.

I think that even though the new ASUS DRW-2014L1T DVD Writer is a great drive, it lacks in one very important performance area. Being outperformed by a two year old drive on spinning speeds is a blemish on its overall spotless performance record. Other than that, the only thing that we had a minor issue with was the colors of the face plates included; the beige isn’t quite beige and the black isn’t quite white.

All things considered, the ASUS DRW-2014L1T is a phenomenal drive with an attractive price point. Even though we would have like to have seen faster read speeds there is nothing else that would stop us from recommending this drive to you.


Pros:

• Fast access times
• Great burst rates
• LightScribe included
• Easy to install
• Very Silent
• The drive works on its side
• A different color drive cover included
• A vast amount of disc formats supported

Cons:

• The faceplate colors seem to be off, e.g. black = dark blue
• Drive has a lot of slow starts, e.g. slow spin-up times
• On several different disk formats, disk speeds are slower than our older drive

Thanks to ASUS for providing us with this review item.​