What's in the box?:
- Samsung SE-406A Portable 6x Blu-ray Disc Combo Drive
- Software CD
- Quick Installation Guide
- USB Cable
Physical Features:
The drive Samsung sent us for this review was manufactured in May of 2011 and had firmware TS00. At the time of this review, this is the only firmware available for the SE-406A.
The SE-406A is one of the smallest Blu-ray combo drives to come through the 'Labs. Measuring 141 x 21.5 x 161 mm, it's not much larger than a couple of jewel cases stacked on top of one another. The SE-406A is also constructed out of a lightweight, black plastic which has an anti-fingerprint surface.
The SE-406A also has its share of logos. Along with the large "Blu-ray Disc" and "Samsung" logos, you can see a few showing support for the DVD+ReWritable and DVD Multi specifications as well as Ultra Speed CD-RW media. On the bottom, the SE-406A has four small rubber feet to keep it from sliding around when placed on a flat surface.
The LED and eject button are located along the front of the SE-406A. This LED lights up green when both reading and writing.
Along the rear, you can see the SE-406A's USB 2.0 interface. This connector not only transfers data but provides power for the drive.
Technical Specs:
Most of the specs below have been taken from Samsung's website and the manual that came with the drive.
| Samsung SE-406A Portable 6x Blu-ray Combo Drive | |
| DVD+R Write Speeds | 8x, 6x, 4x (P-CAV) 3.3x (CLV) |
| DVD+RW Write Speeds | 8x, 4x (Z-CLV) 3.3x, 2.4x (CLV) |
| DVD-R Write Speeds | 8x, 6x, 4x (P-CAV) 3.3x (CLV) |
| DVD-RW Write Speeds | 6x, 4x (Z-CLV) 2x (CLV) |
| DVD+R DL Write Speeds | 6x, 4x (Z-CLV) 3.3x, 2.4x (CLV) |
| DVD-R DL Write Speeds | 6x, 4x (Z-CLV) 3.3x (CLV) |
| DVD-RAM Write Speeds | 5x (P-CAV) 3x, 2x (CLV) |
| CD Write Speeds | 24x, 20x, 16x (P-CAV) 10x (CLV) |
| CD Rewrite Speeds | 24x, 20x, 16x (Z-CLV) 10x, 4x (CLV) |
| BD Read Speeds | 6x Max (BD-ROM Single Layer) 4x Max (BD-ROM Dual Layer) 6x Max (BD-R) 4x Max (BD-RE) 4x Max (BD-R DL) 4x Max (BD-RE DL) |
| DVD Read Speeds | 8x Max (DVD-ROM) 8x Max (DVD±R) 8x Max (DVD±RW) 8x Max (DVD±R DL) 5x Max (DVD-RAM) 4x Max (DVD-Video) |
| CD Read Speed | 24x Max |
| DAE Speed | 24x Max |
| Buffer Size | 2MB |
| Access Times |
200 ms (BD-ROM) 130 ms (DVD-ROM) 130 ms (CD-ROM) |
| CD Formats | CD-DA CD-ROM CD-ROM XA CD+E(G) CD-MIDI Mixed Mode CD-I CD-I Bridge Multisession CD Text CD-R CD-RW |
| DVD Formats | DVD-ROM DVD-R/RW DVD+R/RW DVD+R DL DVD-R DL DVD-RAM DVD-Video |
| BD Formats | BD-ROM BD-R/RE BD-R/RE DL |
AV Connectivity:
The SE-406A is the first Blu-ray drive from Samsung to offer support for their exclusive AV connectivity technology. This unique feature lets you connect the drive to a TV or other AV device via USB and play back the music, pictures and videos stored on a CD or DVD.
To put the SE-406A into AV connectivity mode, simply push the eject button twice within 1.5 seconds while the tray is open. When you do this, the drive will be recognized as a USB memory device rather than an optical drive.
 |
 |
Samsung's AV connectivity technology does have its limitations. It only works with CD and DVD (except DVD-RAM) media using UDF or ISO-9660 file systems. The number of files it can recognize is also limited to 330 and they must be located in the root directory or a sub directory just below the root. Furthermore, the number and size of the files determines the amount of time it takes the drive to recognize a disc. With a 4.3GB DVD, it can take up to two and a half minutes for the SE-406A to read the contents and convert it to FAT32 so that it can be used by AV devices.
More Features:
By looking at the picture below, you can see that Samsung's new BD combo drive is identified as a "TSSTcorp DVDWBD SE-406AB."
Nero also shows that the SE-406A has a maximum CD writing speed of 24x and a 2048KB buffer. This buffer is also backed up by Super Link buffer underrun protection. According to Nero, the SE-406A can write CD-Text and overburn. When testing the drive's capacity, it had no problems overburning up to 99 minutes with our CompUSA media.
Using Alex Noe's Weak Sector Utility we were able to determine that the SE-406A is a "two sheep" burner. This means that Samsung's new drive is capable of backing up titles protected by SafeDisc 2, including version 2.51.
Here is a screen shot from Erik Deppe's Opti Drive Control. Among other things, this program queries the drive to see what its reading and writing capabilities are. Opti Drive Control had no problems detecting the SE-406A's reading and writing speeds and supported disc types.
Opti Drive Control also shows that the SE-406A is an RPC-2 DVD drive. This means that the drive's region is stored in the firmware. The region can be changed five times and after that it cannot be changed anymore. Unfortunately, a patched RPC-1 firmware is not yet available for this drive.
While Opti Drive Control gives us a quick glance at the SE-406A's features, DVDINFOpro provides a little more information on some of the drive's reading and writing capabilities. By looking at the screenshot above you can see that Samsung's new drive can read and write to most DVD formats and read back BD-R, BD-RE and BD-ROM discs.
The SE-406A automatically sets the book type for DVD+R and DVD+R DL discs to "DVD-ROM". For whatever reason though, the drive does not let you set the book type of DVD+RW discs.
