Lite-On’s iHAS424 is the first 24x DVD burner we’ve tested so far, and sadly, the experience doesn’t sell us on the speed bump. Currently, DVD+R media is capped at 16x speeds, but drive makers will nevertheless tweak their hardware to exceed that limit. Often such “over-speeding” techniques are restricted to higher-quality, name-brand media to ensure reliability—in Lite-On’s case that means DVD+R discs bearing the Taiyo Yuden brand. With anything else, you’re stuck at regular-ol’ 16x.

This was the caliber of performance we experienced in our tests, since we always use Verbatim media (manufactured by Mitsubishi) to evaluate optical drives. The iHAS424 filled a single-layer DVD+R disc in 5:53 (min:sec), with an average write speed of 11.66x. That’s more than a minute slower than Samsung’s SH-S223 22x drive (4:46), which happens to be tuned for Verbatim media, but not necessarily other brands (the upshot is that speed claims above 16x only apply to specific types of media). In DVD+R reads, the Lite-On and Samsung drives were more simpatico, with times of 4:56 and 4:55, respectively.

Continue reading this review after the jump.