Positive:

• Comprehensive retail bundle and includes the base for standing the drive on it’s side
• Nero 7 SE Software Disc loaded with features
• CD-R/RW supports writing at 48x/32x
• DVD+R and DVD-R writing up to 18X
• Writes both DVD+R DL and DVD-R DL at 8x
• Will both read and write DVD-RAM at 12x
• Will read DVD-Video SL/DL at 16x/12x
• Supports scanning for Disc Quality (PI/PO)
• Writing quality is good for CD-R, DVD+R/-R, DVD-RW, and DVD+R/-R DL
• Bitsetting is supported for DVD+R, DVD+RW and DVD+R DL (booktype DVD-ROM)

Negative:

• Compatibility improvements needed on some CD-RW and DVD+RW media
• Reading of CD-RW/CD-DA only up to 40x
• Reading of DVD+R at 12x, DVD+RW at 8x and DVD+R DL at 8x

Conclusion:

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

The main positive points: The Sony DRX-830U is called “Multi DVD Burner” since it supports recording on all available media formats including CD-R/RW, DVD±R/±RW, DVD±R Double/Dual Layer, and DVD-RAM.  It is packed with a comprehensive software suite from Nero Burning ROM 7 which is worth the extra retail price.

The 18x DVD+R and DVD-R writing on our media produced good quality. The drive writes CD-R media very fast with very good quality. DVD-RAM read and write supports at 12x is a very nice feature. The Sony DRU-830A also supports disc quality scanning that can be use to report PI/PO errors.

Lastly, the drive uses high speed USB 2.0 interface which we found to be virtually as fast as the internal version of this drive.

The main negative points: There are few issues that we would like to mention and see them improved. The Sony DRU-830A reads CD-RW and CD-Audio at only 40x and DVD±R/RW/DL at 12x/8x/8x speed while other competitors can read them at faster speed.

Improvements are also needed in the area of CD-RW and DVD±RW write quality. The writing quality is poor showing the presence of C2 errors for CD-RW and high PIF errors for DVD±RW.

Final Thoughts: To sum it all up, this is what we would say: “Sony DRX-830U is a good performance External Multi Format DVD Burner.”

By using our CD Freaks price grabber feature we found the retail Sony DRX-830U is listed at $102 (December 2006).

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