Verdict: Slow enough to make a tortoise look agile

Asus has a reputation for producing excellent motherboards, graphics cards and laptops, but it isn't widely recognised as a great manufacturer of DVD writers. Unfortunately for Asus, the DRW-1608P2S isn't going to change this.

The DRW-1608P2S is available in either black or beige, so make sure you order the model to match your case. It's a standard EIDE drive that claims to be capable of writing discs at the following speeds: DVD-R at 16x, DVD-R9 at 8x, DVD-RW at 6x, DVD+R at 16x, DVD+R9 at 8x, DVD+RW at 8x, CD-R at 40x and CD-RW at 32x. It's also capable of reading and writing to caddyless DVD-RAM discs at 5x. Asus bundles a copy of Nero 6 for burning discs, a DVD movie player and a movie creation package, along with an EIDE cable, audio cable and pack of screws.

The DRW-1608P2S proved to be very fast at burning DVD-Rs and reasonably quick at DVD+Rs, but it was abysmally slow at both types of dual-layer media. It took almost twice as long as the Pioneer DVR-111BK to burn a DVD-R9. Even worse, it failed to burn any DVD+R9 media we tried at 4x, which meant that we had to test it at 2.4x; at this speed, it took nearly 45 minutes to finish the disc. The DRW-1608P2S was also the slowest DVD ripper, taking over 20 minutes, when many drives finished in less than half that time.

Asus may make some excellent products, but unfortunately, the DRW-1608P2S isn't one of them.

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