AOPEN DRW4410 DVD+RW+R Review :: Conclusion

Okay, where to start? Well,, after two weeks of treating this unit like a cheap date I have to say only one CD was made into a useless platter that now doubles as a coaster on my test bench. That issue itself was a software not hardware glitch as all the other discs burned fine so I would have to say it is stable device and a good deal at about $145.00 U.S. Overall the unit worked fine for both a backup device and for making backup copies of DVD movies, which in addition to plain Jane CD-R/RW support makes it a pretty flexible drive. One drawback but not a major one is that when you use the device for Direct-CD the thing has to format the disc, which although not a biggie it does take a little time and time is money in this business. The DRW4410 is one of the first drives to offer 4X writeable and rewritable options across the board. In my tests the 4X standard only worked at a true 4X with certain media in the writeable arena and the rewriteable wrote at about 2.4X on the average, but a firmware update from 1.08 to 1.11 fixed that problem and brought the speed up to a 4X average with supported rewritable media as well.

That said the current media is available at your local Best Buy or wherever is still catching up with technology in this arena as many of the manufactures are still at the 2.4X standard for both the +/- DVD formats. I used many different types of media during the testing and evaluation of the 4410 and I have come to this conclusion; stay away from cheap off brand manufactured media, as it may say it works at the 4X standard but when you go to burn your discs you will find it only actually works at the 2.4X standard,, if that. This can be a very frustrating thing to deal with because you expect your DVD to record in a more timely fashion than the real time offered by using cheap media and that is just plain BS. Reading protected data seemed to give the drive no problem, but recognizing and reading protected audio could prove a bit of task for the 4410 with some media. The most negative aspect of the drive were its slow seek times that seemed much slower in some cases than other drives. Watching DVD movies was cool at a resolution 1280X1024@75Hrz on my flat panel and the player aspect of the 4410 offered clear video reproduction using the Power-DVD software. What is the final line of the 4410? If you want a drive that works well as both a DVD+RW/+R or a CDR/RW backup/copy device the 4410 does the job and comes with enough software to get you started in the right direction and at the price it sells for it will not break the bank so overall it's a solid buy.

Doc out