Positive:

• Generally excellent DVD±R writing quality and performance.
• Generally excellent CD-R writing quality.
• Can burn selected DVD±R media faster than its rated speed.
• Very good DVD reading performance and reliability.
• Reads pressed DVD Video SL/DL and recordable media at 16x/12x.
• Supports BitSetting (BookType DVD-ROM) on DVD+R DL.
• Can read and write mini DVD media.

Negative:

• 40x CD-R writing speed is slow by today’s standards.
• Noise levels are quite high at 20x writing speed.

Conclusion:

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

The main positive points:

The Pioneer DVR-116DBK is a fast drive as far as writing DVD±R media is concerned, recording some of the fastest times on DVD±R discs burned in our reviews.

The Pioneer DVR-116DBK wrote our tested DVD±R media with generally excellent quality. It was also nice to see that PIF re-link spikes, which were a concern on the earlier Pioneer drives when writing to DVD+R media at high speed has been solved.

The Pioneer DVR-116DBK was also able to burn selected DVD±R media at faster than its rated speed, in many cases much faster.

The Pioneer DVR-116DBK also has excellent DVD±R DL writing performance and generally, writing quality is very good indeed.

CD-R writing quality was of a very high standard and in most cases excellent on our tested media.

The main negative points:

Not many negative points to the Pioneer DVR-116DBK at all. CD-R writing speed is quite slow by today’s standards.

Audio ripping speeds in secure mode were also quite slow.

Noise levels when burning at 20x was quite high and, much more noticeable than the DVR-115 series of drives at the same burning speed.

To sum up, this is what we would say:

“In true Pioneer tradition, the Pioneer DVR-116DBK has generally excellent writing quality across all the main media groups. Another very good drive from Pioneer”

Because of the generally excellent writing quality across the main media groups, we decided to award the Pioneer DVR-116DBK our CD Freaks “Safe Buy” award.

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