Positive:

• Good to very good writing quality on all used CD-R/RW media.
• Good to very good writing quality and speed on DVD±R/RW/DL media.
• Can burn selected DVD±R media faster than its rated speed.
• Excellent CD and DVD reading performance and reliability.
• Reads pressed DVD Video SL/DL and recordable media at 16x/12x.
• Noise level at high speed still acceptable.
• Supports Bitsetting (Booktype DVD-ROM) on DVD+R DL.
• Supports Disc Quality Scanning.
• Excellent third party support here on CD Freaks.

Negative:

• Does not support Bitsetting (Booktype DVD-ROM) on DVD+R/+RW.
• No disc labelling technique (Labelflash/Lightscribe) included but available on the AD-7241S and AD-7243S models.

Conclusion:

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

The main positive points:

The Optiarc AD-7240S is a very fast drive as far as writing DVD±R media is concerned, with 24x speed reaching lower recording times than any other drive tested on CD Freaks so far. The Optiarc AD-7240S wrote our tested DVD±R media with generally excellent quality, not a single burn made us worry about the quality Reading performance and reliability was excellent. The AD-7240S is a very good CD-Audio and DVD-Video ripper. The drive supports Disc Quality Scanning to give an impression on the quality of the burn. The drive’s noise level at 24x is still acceptable and it is very silent at 16x.

The main negative points:

Not many negative things to say about the Optiarc AD-7240S at all. While disc labelling would be nice, not too many people will need it and those who do can get the Optiarc AD-7241S (Lightscribe) or AD-7243S (Labelflash). Like previous Optiarc or NEC DVD burners, supporting Bitsetting (Booktype DVD-ROM) on DVD+R/+RW is missing but would be really nice and would allow people to create even more compatible discs. To sum up, this is what we would say: “With a great writing quality and decent speed, the Optiarc AD-7240S is generally a very good drive” Some other drives may slightly beat the Optiarc AD-7240S in regards of speed on certain media types or write quality on specific discs. But there was not a single burn with this drive that was not of good or even very good quality. Because of the excellent writing quality throughout all the tested media and the high DVD writing speed, we decided to award the Optiarc AD-7240S our CD Freaks “Editors Choice” award.

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