14 DAY TRIAL // Although 16X was at first a limit for modern DVD units, it seems that little by little the producers are starting to surpass that speed. Of course the champion remains Lite-On with its 20X capable drive. Nevertheless, other producers are slowly upping their drives speeds. And this time, Samsung is the next in line.
Yesterday, Samsung announced what the company claims to be the world's first DVD writer drive that connects to a PC via Serial ATA and writes at speeds that go higher than 16X (22MB/s). The drive comes with specifications for 18X writing speed which allows for a maximum theoretical of 23.4MB/s on the outer sectors. The interface used is SATA2 and it offers the WriteMaster SH-S183L a bandwidth of up to up to 300 MB/s. Although the maximum speed of the interface is impossible to match even for the fastest hard drives, it helps when it comes to transferring lots of small files (especially ones that are being copied from the buffer of the drive).
Actually, the speeds the Samsung unit achieves vary greatly depending on the writing media that is being used. The manufacturer claims that the drive supports all major DVD and CD media formats with 18X write speed only possible with high quality DVD+R and DVD-R media. The maximum read speed in both cases is fixed at 12X (16.2 MB/s). Among the supported writing media come the following with 6X (DVD-RW), 8X (DVD+R DL, DVD+RW) and 12X (DVD-RAM). Read speeds largely vary from 8X (DVD+R DL) to 16X (DVD-ROM).
The drive also integrates HP's proprietary Lightscribe technology, which allows users to print the surface of DVDs with graphics (of course you?ll have to buy special Lightscribe disks in order to use this feature). The SH-S183L is available now for a retail price tag of $90.