Sony DRU-720A: Speed Increases All Around

Introduction

With DVD write speeds increasing, almost all optical storage device manufacturers ante up to keep up with demands of consumers and also to compete with other manufacturers. Recently, some of the bigger names have led the industry to increased DVD-R, DVD+R DL, and DVD+/-RW write speeds adding to the generations of DVD burners.

Sony is one of those big names and they have produced their 8 th generation DVD burner with the now standard, dual layer burning capability. The new DRU-720A model allows the 16x DVD+R burning capability with higher write speeds for all of the other formats. The most significant speed increase has been applied to the DVD-R standard. DVD-R media can now be burned just as fast as DVD+R media at 16x. Along with the write-once update, the DVD+/-RW write speeds have also been increased to 8x/6x respectively. We’re assuming that the next version of the DRU drive series will update that 6x DVD-RW write speed to match the +RW standard. Also updated is the DVD+R DL write speed at 4x. In our 16x roundup in November of 2004, there were only two drives capable of writing to DL media at 4x speeds, NEC’s ND-3500A and Pioneer’s DVR-108D while Sony’s DRU-710A could not complete a dual layer write successfully. Hopefully, that has changed with the DRU-720A.

We’ve taken the DRU-720A and threw our usual benchmarks at it to see which areas have been improved upon. We are predicting many improvements in write speeds as well as quality, and we’ll see if Sony can be a competitor among the rest of the new generation of dual layer burners.