Positive:

• Reads BD-R at 8x and BD-RE media at 5x (Very Impressive)
• Writes BD-R and BD-R DL at 8x
• Writes both DVD+R and DVD-R media at 16x
• Writes CD-R media at 48x
• Has LightScribe support
• Quiet drive operation
• Writes DVD+RW media at 8x and DVD-RW media at 6x
• Supports 5x writing on DVD-RAM
• Very Good to Excellent DVD and CD-R writing quality
• Solid construction with SATA interface
• Full featured Software Bundle from CyberLink

Negative:

• Reads BD-ROM SL and DL media at 4.8x
• Reads DVD-Video SL and DL at 4.8x
• Writes DVD±R DL at only 4x

Conclusion:

Let us summarize the most important positive and negative points below:

The LG BH08LS20’s ability to read High-Definition movies in the Blu-ray format make this drive a must have for any desktop PC or Home Theater PC (HTPC).

The BH08LS20 is one of the first drives to support writing BD-R media at 8X.  The BH08LS20 performs very well when writing to all our BD media in half the time of earlier Blu-ray burners and LG has managed to drop the price of the BH08LS20 to less than half of what its earlier predecessors cost.

Writing of DVD-R and DVD+R media with the LG BH08LS20 at 16X with very good to excellent writing quality gives this unit the ability to be a single drive solution for Blu-ray as well as a CD and DVD burner. 

Writing of CD-R/RW media, 40X and 24X respectively is more than an added bonus, the LG BH08LS20 is also a very fast CD-R/RW reader.

There are a couple concerns that we would like to mention as our feedback.  As previously noted, the drive reads BD-ROM at a slow rate of 4.8X in about 25 minutes for single layer and 51 minutes for dual layer BD-ROMs.  We would like to note that other brands supports reading BD-ROM at 8X in about 13 minutes for single layer and 27 minutes for dual layer BD-ROMs.

We also would like to mention that the drives writes DVD+R DL at 4X, which we think is quite slow for today’s standards.

The drive supports SATA interface for quick and easy installation (SATA cable included in the box) and with a software bundle from CyberLink for Blu-ray Disc,  DVD and CD burning and authoring, really making the LG BH08LS20 a multi format drive solution.

The drive is rip-locked hence reads DVD-Video SL and DL at 4.8x only. We also would like to mention that the drives writes DVD+R DL at 4x, which we think is quite slow for today’s standards.

To sum it all up, this is what we would say: “The LG BH08LS20 is a Blu-ray Disc writer/ reader giving you the ability to watch high-definition content on your PC. Additionally its capability to write DVD and CD-R media with excellent quality establishes this drive as an All-In-One solution.” We therefore award the LG BH08LS20 with the CDFreaks’ 4 star rating and our “Safe Buy” award.

 We found that the retail version of LG BH08LS20 is listed at cheapest price of $249 (March 1^st, 2009).

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