Holiday Shopping Roundup: Eight Dual Format Recordable DVD Drives

Nu Tech DDW-081

The Nu Tech DDW-081 became one of our favorite burners instantly because of the incredibly attractive price. We just finished a review on the unit back in October, and from our benchmarks, you can see that performance was quite high. Of course, the enormous selling point of this drive was the $140 price tag. Complete with bitsetting book types and stable burn speeds, we couldn't have been more pleased with our DDW-081.

Unfortunately, the DDW-081 is not capable of burning DVD-R format discs. However, since it can burn 8X DVD+R (even on most 4X media), we were able to accept the deficiency in features. Interestingly enough, Nu Tech has made numerous claims that its DDW-081 will become dual capable via a firmware upgrade available around the 15^th of December. We were not able to get a beta copy of this firmware, so during its actual release, we will include additional DVD-R(W) tests to this roundup. It is interesting to anticipate how Nu Tech does this on the existing Philips Nexperia platform.

Below is a quick overview of specifications on the drive. The Nu Tech website has the specifications listed as well:

Nu Tech DDW-081
Interface	IDE
CD Write Speed	40X, 32X, 24X (CAV) 16X, 12X, 8X, 4X (CLV)
CD Rewrite Speed	10X, 8X, 4X (CLV)
CD Read Speed	40X Max (CAV)
DVD+R Write Speed	8X, 4X, 2X (CLV)
DVD+RW Rewrite Speed	4X, 2.4X (CLV)
DVD Read Speed	12X Max (CAV)
Supported Modes	DAO / DAO-RAW 16 & 96 TAO SAO / SAO 16 & 96 Packet Write Multi-Session
Supported Formats	DVD+R (DAO, incremental, seq) DVD+RW (random) CD-R, CD-RW, CD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-ROM XA, Mixed Mode, CD Extra Photo CD, CD Text, Bootable CD, UDF
Access Time	CD: 120ms DVD: 120ms
Buffer	2MB

Obviously, the 8X DVD+R write speed is the big eye catcher for this drive. Like the champion Plextor 708A, the Nu Tech DDW-081 is able to burn 8X on most 4X media. Nu Tech has released several new firmwares for its drive, so we will be retesting all of the media with this new firmware.