Afreey 12X DVD Drive

Introduction

When DVD drives were first introduced in the early 90’s most of us were very skeptical as to how well these would perform. Sure they gave quite a number of benefits, DVD movies being on top of it. However our main question was whether they’d be a real killer to out run CD-ROMs for good. Well now we’re in the 21st century and there’s no sign at all of anything as such. Nevertheless the popularity DVD drives are receiving is far greater than what CD-ROM drives initially got when they were introduced. So what does the future promise us? Will we see a shift from CD-ROM’s to DVD ROMs in mass scale? In my opinion we should see this change very soon.

At present times DVD specific software bundles aren’t very common as CD ROM titles since they are still comparatively more expensive than CD ROMs. Though things may seem a bit bleak for DVDs right now change can be expected very soon seeing that DVDs are on the road to hit the critical mass stage. However there are a few DVD software titles that you could get your hands on if interested. The same cannot be said with regard to DVD movies though, since almost every single new movie released today comes out in DVD format. So one need not worry about a limited library of movies since they are as freely available as a VHS cassette.

The latest additions to the DVD drive arena are the DVD-R and the DVD-RAM drives. They store data on special recordable DVD discs, which are widely available in the market today. However DVD-R’s are waaaay….. out of the price range of any home user and they are mainly aimed at high-end companies. We recently bought one for $4500, now that’s a price consumers most certainly won’t want to pay J However DVD-RAM drives though much more expensive than DVD drives, are a lot cheaper than DVD-R’s. The great advantage of having a DVD RAM drive is that they are capable of providing 5.2GB of storage space provided that both sides of the DVD is used. Considering the fact that a standard DVD RAM disc is capable of holding 2.58GB of storage space when compared to the 650MB storage space of a CD-R this surely is a significant improvement. However there’s one small catch right now though, for now DVD RAM discs cannot be read by a standard DVD ROM drive. So considering the aspects of price and the question of versatility I would recommend that you go for a DVD drive rather than thinking of buying one of these (Even if you could afford it).

So getting back to the review at hand, today we’ll be looking at Afreey’s 12X DVD drive. Current day fastest DVD drive is the Pioneer 16X DVD drive. However as you’ll see in the benchmarks we carried out, this drive is as fast as the Pioneer drive and in some instances even faster. So lets check the specs of the drive…

Features

* Data Transfer Rate – DVD:16200KB/S ; CD:6000KB/S

* ATAPI/E-IDE Interface

* Support ULTRA DMA 33 & PIO MODE

* Support Windows 95/98/2000/NT/ME

* Compatible with All CD Formats

* High Speed Audio Extraction

* Vertical Mount Function

* Plug & Play Ready

* Multi-Read Function

* Complies with MPC3

* Low Vibration & Low Noise

* Emergency Manual Eject
Specifications

Interface Type	ATAPI/E-IDE(Support DMA MODE 2, ULTRA DMA 33 ¤Î PIO MODE 4)
Interface Type Drive Performance	Data Transfer Rate DVD: 6480 – 16200 KB/SEC, CD: 2145 – 4800 KB/SEC Access Time DVD : 95 MS CD : 90 MS Driver Reliability (MTBF) 50,000POH (25% Duty Cycle at Room Temperature)
Disc Formats	DVD – ROM :SINGLE LAYER, DUAL LAYER (PTP,OTP) CD – ROM (MODE 1&2) CD – ROM/XA (MODE 2 ,FROM 1&2) CD – R , CD-RW , CD – EXTRA (CD+) PHOTO – CD (SINGLE & MULTI-SESSIONS) VIDEO CD V.11/2.0 , KARAOKE CD CD-I/MPEG , CD – WO , I – TRAX CD
OS Compatibility	Windows ME/2000/NT/98/95, OS/2 WARP
User Friendly Front Panel	Audio Play/Skip Button, Load / Eject ButtonEmergency manual eject, Stereo headphone jackPower on / Busy LED indicator / DVD LED indicatorRotary volume control knob
Multi-Mount System	Vertical and Horizontal
Dimensions	149MM(W)X42MM(H)X196.5(D)
Weight	1.05 KG(2.3lbs)