LG BP40NS20 Portable Blu-Ray burner review

Test machine

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For this review we will be using a computer with the following configuration:

Hardware:

• Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD4 (Intel P55 chipset)
• Processor: Intel i7 750
• RAM: 8 GB Kingston dual channel kit DDR3 
• GFX: ATI HD 5670 (512 Megabytes GDDR5 HDCP compliant)
• Hard disk OS: OCZ Vertex 2 64GB
• Hard disk storage: Samsung Spinpoint F1 1TB (STORAGE HDD)
• PSU: Chieftec 500W
• Display: Fujitsu Siemens 22”
• Operating System: Windows 7 Premium (64 bit)

The LG BP40NS20 was connected to a USB2 port on our test PC. The drive has a 4MB buffer, and it came shipped with firmware version ML01.

Included software package

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The LG BP40NS20 came supplied with LG Burning Tool, PowerDVD 3D BD, Power2Go, PowerProducer, MediaShow, MediaEspresso and USBFast, a good multimedia solution for all your basic needs.

BD Solution v6

Note: We did not install this software on our review notebook or test it.

Installed software:

For conducting our various tests, we will be using the following applications.

• Nero Burning Rom 11
• Nero DiscSpeed
• Exact Audio Copy
• Opti Drive Control
• DVDFab

 

Features and techniques

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BookType (Bitsetting):

The LG BP40NS20 supports bitsetting on dual layer media only and it’s set to DVD-ROM by default.

Here is how you can check if your discs are really written with DVD-ROM book type:

Start OptiDriveControl, click the Disc info button and you should see something like this:

DVD+R DL with BookType DVD-ROM.

Writing technique

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Now it’s time to take a first look at the write technology used by the LG BP40NS20.

For these tests we used Nero DiscSpeed and Opti Drive Control, and wrote a full disc at the drive’s maximum speed.

CD Recordable:

According to the specifications of the LG BP40NS20, it should be able to write CD-R media at a maximum speed of 24x.

The LG BP40NS20 uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 24x. This gives an average speed of 16.10x and a total writing time of 5 minutes and 34 seconds.

For comparison purposes we have produced the following table: 

The LG BP40NS20 is in somewhere in the middle when it comes to CD-R burn speed.

CD Re-writable:

According to the specifications of the LG BP40NS20, it should be able to write CD-RW media at a maximum speed of 24x.

The LG BP40NS20 uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 24x. This gives an average speed of 14.90x and a total writing time of 5 minutes and 42 seconds.

For comparison we have made the following table: 

The LG BP40NS20 is the fastest slimdrive that I have tested so farand it gave the impressive time of 5 minutes and 42 seconds.

8x DVD+R/-R writing speed:

According to the specifications of the LG BP40NS20, it should be able to write DVD+R/-R media at a maximum speed of 8x.

DVD+R

The LG BP40NS20 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8x. This gives an average speed of 5.70x and a total writing time of 10 minutes and 58 seconds.

DVD-R

The LG BP40NS20 uses CAV (Constant Angular Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8x. This gives an average speed of 5.64x and a total writing time of 10 minutes and 50 seconds.

For comparison purposes we have produced the following table: 

As we can see from our table, the LG BP40NS20 gave some very impressive results with both media.

8X DVD+RW writing speed:

According to the specifications of the LG BP40NS20, it should be able to write DVD+RW at a maximum speed of 8x.

The LG BP40NS20 uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 8x. This gives an average speed of 4.73x and a total writing time of 13 minutes and 2 seconds.

For comparison purposes we have produced the following table: 

The LG BP40NS20 is the fastest drive that I have tested when it come to DVD+RW media.

6x DVD-RW writing speed:

According to the specifications of the LG BP40NS20, it should be able to write DVD-RW at a maximum speed of 6x.

The LG BP40NS20 uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at its maximum speed of 6X. This gives an average speed of 4.71x and a total writing time of 12 minutes and 50 seconds.

For comparison purposes we have produced the following table: 

The LG BP40NS20 is the second fastest drive I have tested, it only needed 12 minutes and 50 seconds to complete a burn at 6x on DVD-RW media, simply impressive.

4x DVD+R DL writing speed:

The LG BP40NS20 is capable of burning dual layer discs at a maximum speed of 6x.

The LG BP40NS20 uses Z-CLV (Zoned Constant Linear Velocity), to write at 6x. This gives an average speed of 4.35x and a total writing time of 25 minutes and 54 seconds.

For comparison purposes we have produced the following table: 

The LG BP40NS20 is so far the fastest slim drive that I have tested with +R dual layer media.

Summary:

The LG BP40NS20 did show some very impressive performance, especially on re-writable media.

 

Let’s head on to the next page where we will check reading performance….

• Introduction
• Reading Performance