My third drive
Written: Jan 31 '03 (Updated May 03 '04)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
|
Pros: Fast writing, Nero, Fast audio extraction
Cons: Poor documentation, CDR included is cheap, no firmware upgrades
The Bottom Line: A great value drive for the advanced user; newbies may be happier elsewhere.
|
|
|
| digitaldoc's Full Review: Verbatim VBT481248A CD-RW Burner |
This is the 3rd cdrw drive I have owned. This drive replaces my Iomega 12x10x32."http://www.epinions.com/content_12423958148" This drive is really a rebadged Benq (model 4816P), and is really a 48x16x48, also the Seamless Link buffer underrun system (burnproof equivalent) gives it away.
The out of box experience was mixed. The included ide cable and audio cable were nice touches. The included documentation was very poor. The verbatim manual was very generic and outdated. The Nero manual was very short as it had 6 languages in it, and only 4 pages in English.
The drive easily installed as I swapped out the Iomega for it. Remember to match the master/slave jumper before installing. I had to uninstall Roxio CD Creator to install Nero 5.5. This went well. After a reboot, we were off and burning.
The drive has fast DAE (digital audio extraction) ranging from 22x to 47x depending where you are on the disc (outer tracks read faster). I don't even have 48x media, so I used 40x. It copied a 51 min music cd from start to finish in about 7 minutes. The burning took about 2.5 minutes. This was much faster than my old 12x10x32 drive. The media used was from Fuji, and from Memorex. It did fine with both and does not seem to be picky. No errors, they both played fine in all the audio players.
Nero is a big move up from Roxio. For the advanced user, it offers much more control. I always felt like Roxio's CD Creator was dumbed down, now I see it is. Also, this was no limited version, it was a full version 5.5 of the program. Also, a mp3 music program was included. There was also an Adobe Acrobat version of the manual. I would prefer an actual paper manual.
I've contacted tech support at Verbatim about the included CDR. Just a cheap silver top, without a manufacturer or even a speed rating. This from the company whose fine media swayed me to buy their product. After several followup emails, they sent me 5 Verbatim discs and admitted they put the wrong one in the box.
In conclusion, if you're an advanced user who can install the drive, you will be rewarded with one of the fastest on the market today (let's face it 52x is not going to be appreciably quicker, and there's no media for it). If this is your first drive, be careful, you might be happier with something from a more mainsteam supplier with better support options.
Verbatim has not released any firmware updates for the drive, but the Benq updates for the model work fine w/o any issues.
Update 5/4/04:
The drive still works on an older computer. Neither Benq or Verbatim have released any firmware updates over the last 14 months. When you go with a 3rd tier manufacturer, you don't get top level support. It still copies discs well, and writes at top speed. The drive has issues with certain brands of media including Memorex 40x (won't recognize), and EWorks 48x that it won't write faster than 24x. For what I paid a year later though, I'm not upset. The brands that work well are TDK, Sony, Fuji and Optimum. While many do not like this drive in various forums, for the price, it's pretty good, but not perfect. In the end, on the media above, the write quality is excellent.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 19.99
Operating System: Windows
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
digitaldoc
|
|
Location: New York
Reviews written: 21
Trusted by: 13 members
About Me:
Men don't outgrow their toys, they just get more expensive.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.