Perfectly reliable drive; stylish, very fast and great features!!! (Liteon LTR-52246S)

Member Name: c013310

Product:	Liteon LTR-52246S
Date:	07/07/05 (187 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Extremely fast in all aspects, buffer underrun protection, SMART BURN, very reliable

Disadvantages: eermmmmmm.........

You may not have heard of Lite On before, but just because the brand isn't well known doesn't make it an inferior product to the more expensive 'name brand' products out there. This product has held its own in what has become a very competitive market. I believe that it has now been replaced with a slightly faster model which increases the re-write speed from 24x to 32x but i'll explain what these mean later. However i have decided to review the model i have now as it wouldn't be right trying to review a higher model than the one i have, so on with the review!


What does all these numbers & words mean?
Cd re-writers have developed over the past few years from the previous simple cd-writers. These old drives allowed users to read normal cd-roms for everyday activity but also allowed the writing of data onto a cd-r (a disc which can hold up to usually 750 mb of data once). This could be music, video or data. The cd-rewriter however has gone one further so it allows you to write data to a disc, erase it once finished using it, and write on it again. You can do this many, many times which saves buying huge packs of cd-r disks but instead cd-rw disks which are slightly more expensive. These days most dvd players have the ability to play these format disks so there should be no worry with format issues.

This drive has three numbers. One is that the read speed is 52x, the write speed is also 52x and the re-write speed is 24x. The first speed means that the computer can read normal cd-roms at 52 times the speed of a 1x drive. The 52x is the fastest possible speed at the moment so it is obviously very fast. The drive can also write cd-rs at the same speed which means that it takes roughly 7 minutes for me to write a full cd-r which is very fast. Finally, the drive can re-write cd-rws at a speed of 24 times a 1x drive. This is a good speed at the moment and as i said aat the beginning, the newer model has increased this speed to 32x. I can burn a cd-rw in just under 13 minutes. Now onto the actual features of the drive...


Features & Info
The Lite On drive is very easy to install, simply connct up the data cable, power lead and screw it into your case and it's installed - nothing could be easier! This took me no time at all and it can be done by somebody with no background in I.T as the instructions do a good job of explaining how its done. Once the computer is turned on it automatically recognises the drive and then you can install the software to make it write!

The drive comes bundled with Nero 6, vast ease-of-use improvement over Nero 5.5 . Nero is a well known program that can be used for burning most type of cds including audio, video and data. You can make complimations and can make pal and ntsc vcds or svcds. Lots and lots of features to use with the cd-rewriter.

The acutal design of the drive itself is very modern and goes very well in replacing the old cd-rom drive of any white coloured computer. I wouldn't put it in a black one if i were you!! You can tell when the burning is taking place as a red light turns on instead of the usual green one. Once the red light turns off the drive automatically spits the cd out and its finished.

The drives come with "Burn Protection" which means that if your computer is struggling to get the data for the CD fast enough it can slow down and speed up as nesecarry which many older and inferior drives could not do - you'd just end up with errors on your CD - but not with the Lite On! This is a really useful feature of this drive and it gives phenomenally fast speeds when writing.

The price of this varies at the moment but it can be found for under £50 which is an absolute bargain considering i payed over £100 when i first got it years ago. The drive is real value for money and you can even now get a slightly better model for not much more!

Conclusion
If you need a reliable and speedy cd-rewriter without the hassle of dealing with the new dvd-r format this would be the ideal recommendation. The drive is value for money and will last a long time to come.

Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!

Summary: Great cd-rewriter drive for the budget and will last for a long time!

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Noise:
Speed: