Verdict: No-frills bargain burning
With futuristic HD-DVD and Blu-Ray disc writers looking like non-existent entities for at least the next six months, there's little reason at the moment not to buy a new, high-speed dual-layer DVD writer.
This is especially true of Pioneer's latest burner, the DVR-110DBK, which the company has managed to crowbar into the sub-£30 bracket. And, aside from the fact that it's a bare OEM drive, there are no compromises to be found.
In fact, the DVR-110DBK boasts some of the fastest speeds we've seen, the most significant of which are the dual-layer ones. It can burn DVD+R9 and DVD-R9 at speeds of 8x. This makes it the fastest current dual-layer burner available - it's just a shame that compatible 8x dual-layer media is harder to find than those pesky Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. An extended Internet search revealed that the fastest DVD-R9 discs only support 4x writing, and that everyone hopes we've forgotten about the WMDs.
The Pioneer can burn DVD+R and DVD-R discs at 16x speed, and it can dispatch re-writable DVD+RWs at 8x and DVD-RWs at 6x. CD-Rs can be written at 40x and CD-RWs at 32x. Read speeds are standard fare at 16x for DVD-ROM and 40x for CD-ROM.
Overall, this gives it better potential than Plextor's PX-716SA, which lags behind on dual-layer speeds (at 6x for each format), and DVD-RW, where it's limited to 4x. Another bonus is that Pioneer also offers the DVR-110BK (note the cheeky missing D there), an identical burner, except for its ability to write to DVD-RAM at 5x speeds. If DVD-RAM is a priority then you'll be pleased to know that it costs only £5 more than the DVR-110DBK from Micro Direct (www.microdirect.co.uk).
One reason for the Pioneer drives being so much cheaper than the Plextor is that they stick with an EIDE interface. The rear of the DVR-110DBK offers the usual connections: Molex power, 40-pin EIDE, plus analogue and digital audio outputs.
At the front, there's no hint of a Pioneer logo, simply the DVD+RW, DVD-RW and CD-RW logos. Like the Plextor, there's only an eject button, an emergency eject hole and a solitary LED for read/write indication.
Our test unit arrived with firmware version 1.08, but we downloaded and updated to the latest 1.22 revision, which adds wider media support for both writing and reading, as well as fixing a few minor bugs.
We hooked the DVR-110DBK up to our new test PC, complete with AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 overclocked to 2.8GHz, an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherboard, a 250GB Samsung SpinPoint P120S hard disk and 2GB of Corsair low-latency RAM.
Using Nero Burning ROM 6 for all our testing, we began by writing our usual 4.2GB of data, comprising files of various sizes, to a DVD+R.
Unfortunately, despite the firmware update, the DVR-110DBK didn't recognise our Imation 16x disc as 16x, and refused to burn it faster than 8x. It took eight minutes and 13 seconds to write the files - slower than the Plextor, which finished in just under seven minutes.
It was a similar story with a DataWrite 16x DVD-R, with the burn taking eight minutes and 30 seconds. Burning the files to a 4x DVD+RW and DVD-RW took 13 minutes and 16 seconds, and 13 minutes and 50 seconds respectively.
Surprisingly, the drive burned to our 4x Verbatim DVD+R9 at 8x, although it spun up and down a lot, and finished writing the 8.2GB of files in 18 minutes and 11 seconds - not far ahead of the Plextor, which burned at 4x, and did the job in just over 19 minutes.
Burning 700MB to a CD-R took just over three minutes and 30 seconds, with the 40x speed meaning it wasn't as quick as the 48x Plextor. Ultimately, though, there isn't much to separate the two drives in terms of actual performance across all formats.
One point worth noting is the good reliability factor of both writers - gone are the days of failed burns and the resulting coasters.
CONCLUSION
While it's hard to get excited about yet another DVD writer with marginal speed increases over the various DVD formats, the Pioneer's price makes it a tempting piece of kit. It might lack the Plextor's collect and return warranty, but for the same money, you could buy two Pioneer burners and still have change left over. Assuming you already have burning software or don't mind shelling out for some, as far as value for money is concerned, the DVR-110DBK is impossible to beat.
