16x/8x/16x DVD+RW, 16x/6x/16x DVD-RW, 8x DVD+R DL, 4x DVD-R DL, 48x/32x/48x CD-RW - MPN: DW1655
Strengths: Speed, reliability, plenty of features - a power burner, and very low noise
Weakness: no support for DVD-RAM, but that's not a very popular format anyway
I have used many DVD burners and this is by far the most versatile AND reliable one. The retail box comes with a blank lightscribe CD-R made by Verbatim, and a software combo CD containing Nero "Express" v6.6.0.14 which supports the lightscribe function (note that it's not the "Nero Burning ROM" version.) To burn a lightscribe disc, I think SureThing 4 SE does the job better (free download available.) Another very useful tool in the software CD is BenQ's QSuite v2.1 which is everything you need to unleash the burner's all powerful features:
Solid Burn - the self-learning writing technology that ensures optimized writing strategy for any blank media you throw into it. I found the burner smart enough to master even the crappiest medium after 2-3 burns.
OverSpeed - you can force high speed burns (12x - 16x) on any slower-rated media (4x - 8x). You are on your own risk of getting a toast by doing this, though. Enabling Solid Burn is a must with this feature on. Also if you suspect whether a media can be burdened at much higher speed, use the next feature to check the media's quality beforehand --
QScan - quick tests on any medium to see how fast the disc can be safely burned. You specify a speed that your wish to burn the disc at, and QScan will give you a verdict whether the speed is recommended for the disc after the test.
Book Type Setting - for any DVD+R/+RW disc, you can force its bitsetting stream organized into a way that resembles other medium type, such as DVD-ROM. The benefit of forcing the '+' type media's book types to DVD-ROM is for the best playback compatibility on all DVD players.
As I write this review, BenQ is still deveoping firmwares for this burner. So far, I've found that firmware version BCGB and BCDB are the most reliable, while the latest version BCHB causes some grief due to its poor writing strategy. Let's see if the next firmware release matures it up. Until then, I'd recommend to stick with BCGB or BCDB.
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TopStrengths: good quality
Weakness: lightscribe is slow
This Benq is one of the best burners in the market today. It does everything except DVD-RAM (who uses it anyway) at top speed. It's fast and reliable. I haven't got any bad burns yet. One thing about lightscribe though, it's very slow. At best quality, a full image takes about 30 minutes to burn! The lightscribe discs are still expensive.
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TopStrengths: LightScribe, Cooling, Silent, Included Software, Cheap in its class
Weakness: NONE so far.
Installation is easy. The included software has Nero and Qsuite. These software are allowing to work on all kinds of projects. So far, I am impressed with the speed and has 0% failure rate in writing to disks. Burning DVDs was quiet. The best part of this burner is the LightScribe. Creation of the design was fairly easy and I was able to make a home movie DVD that looked very professional with LightScribe. I bought internal burner and attached it to an external casing that support usb 2.0 and firewire and made it external burner. This burner can read and write any kind of disk. All I don't see in this is the ability to connect to headphones & play audio or video discs.
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TopStrengths: lightscribe technology, fast, great overburning
Weakness: kinda noisy
Great burner with lightscribe capabilities, software included isn't the greatest. Drive doesn't have an audio output jack and have burned tons of blank DVDs and no coasters so far, very reliable and would buy BenQ again.
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TopStrengths: No errors so far.Seems very reliable. Cheaper than Plextor
Weakness: sOMEWHAT noisy and the Light scribe stinks.
Using for about a week now and not one bad disk or error.i like the speed and seems reliable.Not over noisy but makes more noise than a Plexor.The LightScribe,which is a H.P. software is not that good.Seems to be a Contrast problem and if you don't have knowledge of it you are left in the dark.Took me two days to get it to work.i bought at NewEgg and it was OEM,which means NO SOFTWARE OR DRIVERS FOR IT.But the Price is right!
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TopStrengths: Able to overburn media with great results. Able to 'learn' new media so you can burn with confidence without having to update firmware. Great speed and reliability.
Weakness: NONE!
Benq is not a name that a lot of people will recognize. However it has proven itself as a quality manufacturer and even OEMs a lot of other brand name equipment - not the other way around. I owned the DW1620 for quite some time after much research including cdfreaks.com. I can't count the number of successful DVD's and CD's that were burned. I CAN count the number of unsuccessful burns - NONE! The DW1620 was the first to offer overburning, allowing you to burn 8x media at 12x or 16x reliably. I have now owned the DW1655 for about a month and can only say WOW. Benq took everything great about the DW1620 and improved on it. Now you can burn almost any media at higher speeds with the learning feature that's built into the drive. I have now burned from 3 spools of 3 different brand DVD's and all have burned successfully at 16x regardless of what the media was rated for. It's almost unreal that other brands can sell such inferior drives for double and triple the price!
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TopStrengths: It is a very good DVD burner drive. It allows you to burn dual format DVDs at good speeds. It also has LightScribe capabilities, so you can burn your own images directly to the CD without buying labels. The retail package comes with excellent software and
Weakness: The drive doesn’t have a cd audio out in the back of the drive, so you can’t connect it to an auxiliary cd audio in of you motherboard of sound card. Hardware included only 2 mounting screws, at least mine did. 4 mounting screws are necessary to keep the
Overall, I am satisfied with this burner. Its burner speeds and ligthscribe capabilities, but I have to recognize that I was very disappointed when I found that it doesn’t have a CDOUT connection to connect to the sound card. If this is not an important factor for you, then it would be a great DVD burner for a decent price. I would recommend it.
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TopStrengths: fast, reliable
Weakness: haven't tested enough media yet
seems to burn fast and reliably, also seems to read most media. although, i've had issues reading dvd+r disks that were burned on a dell laptop drive. i still need to try the dvds on another drive to make sure the disks are good
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TopStrengths: Reliablity. Speed. Light Scribe.
Weakness: None
I've been using 5+ DVD burners from Sony, Pioneer etc.. and this BenQ drive is the most reliable. Burned about 40+ DVD media without any coast. And some of those medias were no name brand, cheap medias.
What do you expect from DVD-burners... it's fast and reliable.
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TopStrengths: Very Quiet, reliable with state of the art capabilities (IE: Smart Burn, Second generation Lightscribe and much more).
Weakness: None, so far.
I would like to have a headphone jack and volume control on the bezel plate like some other brand I have...but hey, I like this one anyway. I have Hp, Samsung, Light-On, Cyberhome and Sony burners. I did extensive research before I bought this one...so far, looks like my research is paying off.
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TopStrengths: Lightscribe
Weakness: BenQ not user friendly, the Nero that is bundled does not work with Windows XP sp2
This is a great drive, however the software needs some work, had to download upgrades for Nero so it would work with XP sp2, but after the upgrades, it great to use. The BenQ QSuite is very hard to understand and not user friendly
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TopStrengths: Price, Speed, Lightscribe, included software
Weakness: For this price none. If it were a $90 drive I would say it is a little bit noisy and runs a little hot, but really at this price i can live with that.
This is a fairly fast burner for this price range. The included DVD producer software is basic but capable. Yeah there is a lot fancier stuff out there but I put together a bunch of DVDs of tv shows I downloaded for a trip with my kids and was able to edit out commercials, add chapters, etc.
Lightscribe is slow on any burner but on this one it actually went faster than advertised. DVDs look really cool.
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Great DVD Burner!
Strengths: Well built; cooling system; good included software; quiet burner
Weakness: Expensive; loud during CD ripping; installation hardware not included; web-support non-existent
I've only had this burner for a couple of days, but am pretty satisfied. Installed in a snap, and was identified right away by Windows XP. The latest firmware was included, which is a good thing, as the www.benq.com website was sorely lacking on any support for this new product (only been out since beginning of 2006). They have *nothing* listed for the DW1655! No firmware, manuals, software, warranty info, etc.!! This is pretty lame. I had to research on user forums just to see what the current firmware was!! The retail package did not include any installation hardware (IDE cable, screws), which I thought it should have. The printed documentation is fairly lame as well. I did find some on the software CD. The included software is fairly complete. Not only do you get an OEM verion of Nero 6.6, but you also get the QSuite software. This allows you to make all sorts of manual tweaks to the burner and how it performs under various situations. I have yet to play around with it, but was impressed with all the switches you could select! I left the defaults for now, as I didn't want to break anything! :-) Evidently this drive has features to "learn" how to burn more intelligently, and can be controlled via the QSuite.
To be honest, I am not sure whether it is worth paying the extra for the Retail version of this drive over the OEM version. Seems like all you get is the Nero software, which most people already have, and the QSuite & LightScribe software. Not sure whether you can download this from the BenQ website or not. Oh, and you do get one blank light-scribe DVD disc as well.
My first burns on 8x Sony DVD-Rs went flawlessly, and right quick. Definetly faster than a Pioneer DVR-110D 16x burner that I also own. CD & DVD rips were also much faster than the Pioneer.
Ripping/Burning DVDs was relatively quiet, but ripping CDs was a bit noisy. Very whiney! I have not done anything with the LightScribe, nor do I really plan to. The discs are too expensive, and the process is fairly slow (almost 30-minutes to burn the image!). I would have preferred the DW1650 model, which excludes the LightScribe feature, but that is not being sold yet.
There is also an advertising bullet that mentions how the drive is cooled. I always like my coputer components to run cool, so I like this feature. Whether it works, I have no idea! ;-)
So, overally I am quite happy. Worked out of the box, and performed excellently. My only knocks were BenQ's lack of support and documentation. And the price, which was high since the drive was just released, and demand is high. By the time you read this review, I'm sure the prices will have dropped!
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