Lite-On SOHW-1653S DVDR/RW review

It has been a while since we last looked at a Lite-On drive so the time is here to look at a new one; the Lite-On SOHW-1653S. We are familiar with Lite-On drives for several years and their drives do usually perform very well and has many features compared to their low price. Let us see if this drive continues this trend and could keep up with the competition, especially from NEC and BenQ that have made some exceptionally good DVD-Writers. Let’s take a look at the already well know Lite-On history.

Some Lite-On history:

In 1995 Lite-On gathered some elite scientist and engineers from ITRI (Industrial Technology Research Institute) to start an optical storage research and manufacturing business in Taiwan. Currently they have over 130 engineers with Master & Ph. D. degrees in their Research & Development team, that are dedicated to the development of their patented anti-vibration mechanical design, advanced circuit design, firmware programming & performance tuning. The Research & Development team achievement is a key factor that has ensured their success in product development.

In 1997, Lite-On established a large manufacturing facility in China enabling them to provide optimum OEM/ODM support to all 1st-Tier PC makers, which further demonstrated their success in the worldwide Optical drive market. Today, they are among top-3 optical drive manufacturer worldwide, mostly due to attractive pricing and quality filled products, along with large OEM contracts. They have also received top brand name recognition in many regions. These achievements, plus superb management visions and planning, enabled them to continue their growth and profit even at times when the optical drive market experienced “price-wars” and many optical drive manufacturers were forced out.

In 1999, they created LITE-ON Information Technology Corporation, another proud member of the Lite-On Group, to concentrate on developing and manufacturing optical drives to stay strong in the storage business. They are going to carry on the tradition of developing optical drives to expand their research and manufacturing capacity to new generations of products such as DVD drives, High speed CD-RW drives and COMBO drives to stay strong in both the retail and OEM/ODM market.

At 9^th July 2001 Lite-On IT signed a co-operation contract with JVC, a famous Japanese electrical company, to be in alliance with each other. Two new companies was established, one is the optical drives manufacturing sales company, named as JVC LITE-ON IT Manufacturing & Sales, Limited (JLMS) , the other is pick-up head developing & manufacturing company.

JVC is a pioneer in development of key components of optical drives and consumer electronics as well, Lite-On IT is excellent in volume manufacturing and developing, also skilled in IT industry. That kind of strategic alliance would benefit both companies.

If you have read our previous Lite-On reviews you may already feel familiar with this company information, so let us now take a look at the specifications of this drive:

Drive specifications:

These are the specifications of this drive, found at the Lite-On webpage:

SOHW – 1653S 16x 4x / 12x 4x / 16x / 4x + 48x 24x 48x Half-Height DVD-Dual

• ATAPI / E-IDE Half-Height internal DVD+R / DVD+RW / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD-ROM / CD-R / CD-RW / CD-ROM combination drive
• Support Double Layer DVD+R9 Recording Function
• SMART-BURN avoiding Buffer UnderRun Error, Automatically adjusting writing strategy & running OPC to provide the best burning quality
• SMART-X function adjusts CD-DA / VCD / DVD data extraction to a fastest allowable speed according to both data request rate from host and disk quality
• VAS® system reduce vibration and noise during recording and reading
• Support Fixed Packet, Variable Packet, TAO, SAO, DAO, Raw Mode Burning & Over-Burn
• DVD read compliant : DVD single / dual layer ( PTP / OTP ), DVD-R ( 3.9 GB / 4.7 GB ), DVD-R multi-borders, DVD+R, DVD+R multi-sessions, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW
• CD read compliant : CD-DA, CD-ROM, CD-ROM / XA, Photo-CD, Multi-session, Karaoke-CD, Video-CD, CD-I FMV, CD Extra, CD Plus, CD-R, and CD-RW
• Support both 8 cm and 12 cm disc of CD and DVD family
• Conform to Orange Book : Part 2 CD-R Volume 1, Part 2 CD-R Volume 2 Multi Speed, Part 3 CD-RW Volume 1 ( 1x, 2x, and 4x ), Part 3 CD-RW Volume 2 : High Speed, Part 3 CD-RW Volume 3 : Ultra Speed
• Supported transfer mode : PIO mode 4, DMA mode 2 and Ultra DMA mode 2

The specifications is very good, the only drawback we could see is that it only supports 12x writing for DVD-R. It should also write with CAV technology, which is promising for low recording times and high average recording speeds.

What’s inside the box?

Let us start out pretty easy with taking a look at what we got and what the box contained.

The drive we received was a retail drive that came in a nice looking box, pretty identical to earlier boxes we have seen from Lite-On. Let us take a look at the content of the box:

Looks like a very small bundle but to make sure that we do not miss anything we list what we got below:

This is what the Retail bundle consists of:

•        The drive itself
•         Cyberlink PowerDVD software CD
•          Nero software CD
•          Quick installation manual
•          Screws
•          Audio cable

Far from the best bundle we have seen, we are missing an IDE-Cable, a thicker manual and some empty media.

Now it’s time to take a look at the drive itself:

Nothing new under the sun here, it uses the usual Lite-On front that we have got quite used to now.

Our sample was produced in China and has a production date of October 2004.

Still no changes on the back either; from the left: undocumented pins used for calibrating the drive at the factory; digital audio connector; analogue audio connector; pins and jumper to set the drive to cable select, slave or master; IDE connector and finally the power connector.

Now, let us install the drive and check out the features and program bundle of this drive on the next page…