In House Review - ASUS CRW-5224A 52/24/52 CD-RW

[Ian]

Yeah, we had a little down time this morning. Someone was doing a little cable management and forgot to plug some stuff back in. Hopefully we can make it up to everyone with a review of ASUS's new 52/24/52 CD-RW, the CRW-5224A. Featuring some of the fastest speeds currently available, the CRW-5224A reads and writes at 52x and is the first drive from ASUS to feature 24x rewriting speeds. The drive also has many of the features we've come to expect from ASUS including their own FlextraLink and FlextraSpeed technologies and support for the Mt. Rainier format.

Many of you have asked if the CRW-5224A was faster than the Lite-On based CenDyne Lighting V. In this review we put these two drives head to head to find out which one is the better drive.

ASUS CRW-5224A 52/24/52 CD-RW

If you have any comments or questions about the drive or the review, please post them in the forum by clicking the link below.

[Alejandra]

Excelent review, Ian.

I'M very impressed with the rewriting P-CAV curve.

[Ian]

Yeah, the ASUS was only a little slower than the Plextor and Yamaha when rewriting.

I should also mention that I did try High Speed RW media when using Mt. Rainier and I didn't have the problems some other websites had.

[zak2k2]

So would you recommend this drive?

[Harrier]

"The CRW-5224A is the first drive from ASUS to feature 24x rewriting speeds. Like the drives from Plextor and Yamaha, it uses P-CAV to reach this speed."

So what is the true writing method?

[cfitz]

P-CAV in my opinion, although it is open to a little debate. Look at the curve and you can see that the writing speed starts out slightly slower than the final speed, and ramps up to that final speed. Admittedly, the CAV part of the curve where the speed is ramping up is very short, but it is there. For practical purposes, though, one wouldn't be too far wrong to just think of the rewriting as CLV. In this particular case the difference from true CLV is so small that one could also argue for calling it CLV. It isn't too important either way, since this is just a label - what really counts it how the drive actually performs.

cfitz

[motocoke]

Oh, I'm beginning to find limited software support for this drive irritating.

I've had this drive for 2 days, and it does not work well with Feurio and EAC's Write feature.

Pity because I've used EAC extensively with TEAC CDW540, Yamaha CRW-F1 and TDK 4800D, without problems.

I've read from the Feurio website that Asus is one manufacturer that has been un-cooperative in providing the technical details.

Pity because the ASUS is more expensive than the Lite-On LTR-52246S, and I now wish I had bought the LiteOn.