In our July issue, we reviewed OWC’s Mercury Pro 8x Blu-ray External and found the drive’s performance puzzling. In short, the Mercury Pro’s BD-R write speeds belied its 8x rating, with the drive taking nearly an hour to fill a 25GB disc with data, compared with the 22-plus minutes it took LG’s 6x GBW-H20L. It got us wondering whether the issues were more the fault of OWC’s external enclosure or the Pioneer 8x Blu-ray drive at its heart.
This month we were able to answer that question as we tested Pioneer’s BDR-2203, the same drive used in the Mercury Pro. We immediately cut to the chase, testing the BDR-2203’s BD-R write performance. While the Mercury Pro was incompatible with the Nero DiscSpeed app we use for our optical drive tests—forcing us to use Nero 8’s Burn Express instead—the BDR-2203 had no such problems. Using DiscSpeed along with 4x Verbatim media, the drive wrote 22.5GB of data to a BD-R disc in 14:56 (min:sec)—a Lab record!—maintaining 8x speeds through much of the job. With rewriteable media, the drive’s performance wasn’t quite as impressive. The BDR-2203 held a steady 2x speed when filling a 25GB BD-RE disc, for a time of 45:35, much like the Mercury Pro—and 15 percent slower than the LG GBW-H20L’s BD-RE write time.
With standard DVD media, the BDR-2203’s performance was pretty much in line with the Mercury Pro’s—and that’s not a bad thing. While neither drive toppled the GBW-H20L in DVD+R speeds, all three were virtually tied: Pioneer’s internal drive wrote 4.38GB of data to a single-layer disc in 6:06 compared with the external drive’s time of 6:16 and the LG drive’s time of 5:43. On the other hand, both the Mercury Pro and the BDR-2203 surpassed the GBW-H20L in our DVD-ripping benchmark, with scores that were 50 percent faster than the LG drive’s.
In the end, not only did Pioneer’s BDR-2203 prove that it wasn’t to blame for the Mercury Pro’s BD-R issues, it succeeded in unseating LG’s GBW-H20L as our Blu-ray burner of choice. After all, who wouldn’t want BD-R write times that are 30 percent faster for a comparable price, along with solid performance in all other areas?
Fastest BD-R writes; fast DVD rips; competitive price.
It's not the fastest at BD-RE writes.
| Pioneer BDR-2203 | OWC Mercury | LG GBW-H20L | |
|---|---|---|---|
| DVD Write Speed Average | 11.64x | 11.52x | 12.07x |
| DVD Read Speed Average | 11.93x | 11.96x | 9.10x |
| Access Time (Random/Full) | 173/365ms | 169/357ms | 100/175ms |
| DVD Ripping | 10:06 | 10:49 | 15:19 |
| Time to Burn 22.5GB to BD-R (min:sec) | 14:56 | 52:17* | 22:16 |
| Time to Burn 22.5GB to BD-RE (min:sec) | 45:35 | 45:19* | 39:35 |
Links:
[1] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/katherine
[2] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/owc_mercury_pro_8x_bluray_external
[3] http://www.maximumpc.com/files/u90693/OpticalDrive_Pioneer_full.jpg
[4] http://www.maximumpc.com/files/verdict-images/OpticalDrive_Pioneer_verdict.jpg
[5] http://pioneerelectronics.com
[6] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/reviews/lg_gbwh20l
[7] http://www.maximumpc.com/article/lg_ggwh10ni_super_multi_blue
[8] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/bluray
[9] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/reviews/hardware
[10] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/hardware
[11] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/optical_drive
[12] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/pioneer
[13] http://www.maximumpc.com/tags/reviews
[14] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/magazine/2009
[15] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/magazine/2009/september_2009
[16] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/reviews
[17] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/reviews/hardware/optical_drives
[18] http://www.maximumpc.com/articles/magazine
[19] http://www.maximumpc.com/user/login?&commentfragment=comments_top_anchor
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