CDRLabs.com

CDRLabs has taken one of the first looks at Mitsumi's new 54/32/54 CD-RW, the CR-485FTE. Featuring some of the fastest speeds available, the CR-485FTE is the world's first drive to read and write at 54x and rewrite at 32x. The drive also offers features like ExacLink buffer underrun protection and Mitsumi's own AEGIS WRITING technology.

In this review we take a look at some of the features found on the CR-485FTE and then put it up against some of the 52x writers from the competition. Are 54x reading and writing speeds really as good as they sound? You'll have to check out the review to find out.

Mitsumi CR-485FTE 54/32/54 CD-RW

If you have any comments or questions about this review or the Mitsumi CR-485FTE, please post them in the forum by clicking the link below.

Nice review, Ian!

I wonder why Mitsumi didn't make it support Mt. Rainier?

The drive will support it with the next firmware revision. Mitsumi claims that the drive is 100% Mt. Rainier compliant.

These early drives were meant for OEM's. Without OS support, a lot of OEM's don't want to support Mt. Rainier.

There is firmware version 7.0C supporting MT rainier on the Mitsumi site:

http://www.mitsumi.com/enduser/1_drivers.html#CD-R/RW

Wow, they released that update fast! Thanks!

BTW, in my comment above, I understood that Mitsumi was planning to release an update with this capability; I just didn't understand why it wasn't supported in the original firmware.

I've had this drive for about a week now, and I agree with the review except for one thing: my drive is quiet. It's now louder than my PX-504A and my LiteOn DVD (166S) is louder.

The lack of error reporting sucks, it's audio ripping is slow most of the time (except CD-Rs, which my reads at the full 54x speed), and it's write quality seems very good. As a burner, it's great. For reading/ripping, I'll stick to the 166S...

Interesting... What firmware do you have, Burninman?

The LTR-522452S is still unbeat in the writing speed deptartment when it comes to cd-r's. Mitsumi matches the 650MB writing time but falls slightly behind when it's upped to 701MB. Granted, the difference is negligible (the Samsung offers some good competition at 701MB also) but if writing speed is your only concern, the Lite-On is still the best buy. Of course, cd-rw discs are another story altogether.

Hello!

Nice review, Ian

It´s a good writer, but not perfect. But no writer is perfect. The only thing i don´t like is the media-compatibilty. But the writing-quality is good in the most cases, i think

Does anyone know, which chipset it has?

@vinnie97

I think it´s not important to write a CD-R in 2.30 oder 2.32. I have enough time for a few seconds more, my important thing is the writing quality

Right, scour, like I said, the difference of a few seconds is negligible. . Use the right discs and any of the aforementioned drives will offer commendable writing quality. The question is which one can burn the quickest yet still maintain acceptable writing quality. That would require more extensive testing between all 3 drives.

vinnie97 wrote:Right, scour, like I said, the difference of a few seconds is negligible. . Use the right discs and any of the aforementioned drives will offer commendable writing quality. The question is which one can burn the quickest yet still maintain acceptable writing quality. That would require more extensive testing between all 3 drives.

Yes, you need all 3 writers, many different media and many time

Maybe a user here get this mitsumi and post his media-experience with the Mitsumi in the compatibility-thread

Thanks Ian !

Liteonguy, I have the 7.0c firmware in my drive.

Any speed differance between 48x/52x/54x drives is only a few seconds. No real point really. Just bragging rights. I was more interested in burning quality, and this drive wasn't a Lite-On (I've been burned by 3 Lite-Ons, soo......).

And I should've said it before: Nice review Ian (as always!)!

Mt. Rainier performance has been added.

While the jump in firmware versions was pretty big (4.0B to 7.0C), the only thing 7.0C adds is support for Mt. Rainier. It didn't have any effect (that I saw) on media compatibility. I was really hoping it would.

Hello!

Damn, i hoped too, that a new FW can bring a better media-compatibility. That´s the only thing i don´t like at this Mitsumi

Scour wrote:Hello!

Damn, i hoped too, that a new FW can bring a better media-compatibility. That´s the only thing i don´t like at this Mitsumi

Hopefully that will be in the next update. Will not as often as Lite-On, Mitsumi releases updates pretty frequently.

Hello!

@Ian:

LiteOn makes to many FW-updates; i don´t think that every new FW have new media-list. Maybe they want to kill the bugs that were included in the old FW

When Mitsumi it makes like Plextor and Cyberdrive do, that will be allright

Hello!

I have 2 questions about the Mitsumi:

1. When a CD-R-media is inserted, show the burning-prg the max. Write Speed or did it says always that the media can be burned at 54x?

2. When a lower-quality-media is burning, did the Mitsumi decrease the speed meanwhile writing? The LG decreases the burning-speed, when he detected low quality at end of the media

Scour, yes it lets you select 54x for any media. But it's equalivent of SmartBurn automatically drops the burn speed down to whatever the media can handle. The drive just doesn't report that speed.

Hello!

Thanks, BurninMan921. That cleared my first question

Hello!

@Ian:

In the review you write about a media-list for this writer; where can i get that list?

You would have to come to my house and look at it.

Ian wrote:You would have to come to my house and look at it.

Tell me your address

It's probably out of date anyway. It was for the original firmware.

Ian wrote:It's probably out of date anyway. It was for the original firmware.

Better than nothing, I think. I didn´t found anything like this at Mitsumi Homepage.

And I´m not sure, that the media-compatibility has much changed with the new FW