Specs

Write Support
DVD-R (4.7GB General Discs Only)
DVD-RW
CD-R
CD-RW

Read Support
DVD-ROM single layer/dual layer
DVD-R (all types)
DVD-RW
CD-ROM Mode 1
CD-ROM XA Mode 2 (form 1, form 2)
CD-TEXT
Photo CD (single & multiple session)
CD-DA (Audio CD)
CD-Extra
CD-R
CD-RW (Support AM2)

Write Speed
DVD-R 2X-CLV (2.76 MB/s), 1X-CLV (1.38 MB/s)
DVD-RW 1X-CLV (1.38MB/s)
CD-R 8X-CLV (1.41 MB/s), 4X-CLV (0.70 MB/s)
CD-RW 4X-CLV (0.70MB/s)

Read Speed
DVD-ROM (Single) Max. 6X-CAV (8.01 MB/s)
DVD-ROM (Dual) 2X-CLV (2.76MB/s)
DVD-R, DVD-RW 2X-CLV (2.76 MB/s)
CD-ROM Max. 24X-CAV (4.23MB/s) CD-R
CD-RW Max. 16X-CAV (2.82MB/s)
CD-Audio Max. 10X-CAV (1.76MB/s)
Video-CD 4X-CLV (0.70MB/s)
Access Time* DVD 200 Msec (Random Average) CD 180 Msec

*When DVD-ROM Single Layer Disc and CD-ROM Mode1 Disc are used

Interface ATAPI (ATA/ATAPI-5 & SFFC INF8090 Ver.5)
Data Buffer 2Mbytes (Read) 2Mbytes (Write)
Mounting Orientation Horizontal & Vertical
Power Consumption Maximum 23.8W
Dimensions (W x H x D): 148 x 42.3 x 197.7 mm 5-13/16" x 1-11/16" x 7-13/16"
Net Weight 1.1 kg 2 lbs. 7 oz

Our Test Machine's Specs:
Pentium 4 1.5GHz (not over clocked)
384MB SDRAM
DELL (Custom) Motherboard
1 x Maxtor 20GB Hard Disk

INTRODUCTION

This DVD writer is based on the "- (minus) " recording standard and is an update to the Pioneer A03 recorder which we reviewed last year. If you wish to know a little more about the "minus" recording format then check out our review of the A03.

This drive writes to DVD-RW disks at x1 speed and DVD-Rs at x2 speed - the x2 DVD-R writing is a non DVD forum standard that Pioneer added to their own line of recorders.

Pioneer only slightly updated the A04 by adding a few extra features, these extra features are:

Differences between A03 and A04

Horizontal and vertical mounting is now possible
CD writing is now burn proof capable (as well as DVD)
Support added for high speed CD-RW disks (only 4x speed max. though)
DVD-ROM read speed increased from 4 X to 6 X for single-layer DVD-ROM disks only
Shorter by 1cm. WxHxD: 5-13/16 x 1-11/16 x 7-13/16 (A03 is 5-13/16 x 1-11/16 x 8-2/16)
UDMA33 support (A03 is 16MB/sec max.)
Increased access time to just under 15 seconds (A03 is 18 seconds)
Audio S/N ratio line out is over 75db now (A03 is 70db)
Standby power consumption reduced to 3.1W (A03 consumes 6.8W)
Digital audio connector was removed (analogue audio only now)
Better cooling fan
Increased weight 1.2 kg - 2 lbs. 10 oz (A03 is 1.1 kg - 2 lbs. 7 oz)
CD-R/RW reading speed increased increased to x24 (A03 is only x16 speed)
DAE speed increased from 10 x to 24 x speed
2 Mb (write and read ) buffer now (A03 was 2MB for writing only with 512KB Read)
Unfortunately the drive doesn't have any real writing speed increases over the A03, but it is expected that the DVD forum will give the go ahead for a faster "-" (minus) writing standard which will bring 2 speed DVD-RW and 4 X speed DVD-R writers in October 2002. The drive is very cheap here in the UK and can be bought for £199.00 with 2 x speed media only costing £1 each! This is a huge price drop considering when we reviewed the A03 it cost over £500.00.

In this review we will compare it to the recently released (and reviewed) Philips DVDRW228k and the Pioneer A03 (for which this drive is a replacement). First we will take a look to see what's inside the package...

What the package includes

The package contains:

1 x Pioneer DVR-104 DVD Writer
1 x Manual

We did not receive the retail package as it was an OEM donation package, but depending on which country you purchase the drive from you can expect a different software package. The contents of the retail A04 package are:

Pioneer A04/104 Drive
Instant CD/DVD 6.4 from VOB
Sonic Solutions MyDVD 3
Multilingual Manual
Mounting Kit
1 x DVD-R
Note: The Pioneer DVR-104 and A04 are the same drive and they only differ in the extras that they come with. The A04 will come with the software package above and the 104 (OEM) will usually come with just a manual.

The front of drive has a headphone socket, a volume control, an emergency eject hole and only one multipurpose LED that lights up green during reading and orange during a write operation. The "High Speed Logo" is also emblazon on the tray - this means disks that can be written up to 10 speed are now recognised, but the drive only supports writing to them at x4 (this is an improvement over the Pioneer A03 as it wouldn't even read HS disks).

Something not shown in the picture are the mounting spring adjustable tabs on the tray which are designed to prevent disks falling out of the tray. The tray on the front is also spring loaded (this is to reduce vibration).

At back of the drive you will find the usual connectors: jumpers for making the drive a Master/Slave, the SPDIF output connector and a fan for cooling. The fan is now a sleeve bearing mechanism fan and the digital audio output connector has been removed. It is recommended not to use an 80-pin IDE cable for reasons only known to Pioneer.


INSTALLATION

As with most IDE drives now installation is simple. We installed it as secondary master by changing the jumper on the back. The drive was detected in Windows XP without any problems.

Auto insert notification was enabled but we disabled it by changing the registry key "KEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Services/Cdrom/Autorun=0". DMA is normally successfully turned on by default if Windows XP can detect it. We experienced no difficulty or strange behaviour during installation.

Above you can see we examined the drive using the popular program Infotool version 1.01. It is reporting that the Read speed is: 24 x and write speed is 8 for CD-R disks. This is slower than the Philips 228k (32 read and 12 speed write). The buffer of this drive is 2,000KB.

You can see that it can not read DVD-RAM disks and it can also read the competition formats "+" disks i.e. DVD+R & DVD+RW. It wrongfully reports no buffer underrun protection for CDs which is inaccurate. This drive also does not support the packet writing standard "Mount Rainer" which is available in newer CD writers.

Installation was easy and it took around 10mins from disassembling the machine to having the software installed and the drive ready for use.

Our review drive is a May 2002 model that came shipped with firmware version 1.20 (which is currently the latest version available for this drive).

The software we used for this review was: DiskJuggler 4.01.1002, Nero 5.5.9.0, Record Now Max 4.1 & CloneCD 4.0.1.10.

The above shows what Nero (5.5.9.0) finds about the drive. Nero does correctly detect its burnproof feature and it is supported. You can see it supports the overburning of CDs and the writing of CD-Text information. The maximum writing speed of CD-Rs is 8 speed (around 10mins). What is strange is the DVD high compatibility option has not appeared (see the review of the Philips DVDRW228k) to aid compatibility with certain DVD players by padding the disk with dummy data (to a minimum of 1GB).

The above screen shots are from DiscJuggler 4.01.1002 and more information is now revealed. We can see that it reads DVD's at x 6 speed (slow by today's standards as 16 speed DVD-ROM readers have been out for well over 14months). It also reports ripping (CDs) at 10 speed.

The drive can only write to CD-RWs at 4 speed (which is much slower than the Philips 228k's 10 speed) and DVD-RWs at x1. The DVD "+" format wins by a huge margin in the re-writing stakes (at least on specifications). We were disappointed to learn that no DAO RAW mode was added since the A03. Also the drive can not read and write full 96 bytes sub-codes (only 16 bytes).

CD CAPABILITIES

The CD writing specifications of the Pioneer A04 are somewhat lower than what the 2nd generation "+" (plus) drives can achieve. The Pioneer A04 supports 8 speed CD writing, 4 speed CD-Rewriting and 24 speed CD-ROM reading (8x4x24).

First we examined the speed at which it can write to CDs using various media. The CD media we tried was identified as (by CDIdentifier):

Moser Baer India Ltd
Multi Media Masters Machinery SA
TDK Corp.
Ritek Co.

CD-R Media Writing Test
The drive only supports 8 speed and 4 speed writing of CD-Rs (a 40 speed disk was inserted):

The first of our CD-R test involved writing a full 80-min CD at the drive's maximum 8 x speed:

Above we can see (using Nero) it took 10mins and 41 seconds (this is excluding the verification times).

CD-RW Media Writing Test
Our next test timed how long it took to erase a CD-Rewritable in full erase mode. Nero showed the available speed only as 4x (unlike the Philips 228k which had 10 speed for this disk as an option as well).

Quick Erase
We next did a quick and full erase test. The drive took 1 min and 2 secs to erase a CD-RW in our quick erase mode test.

Full Erase
In the full erase test the drive took 21 mins and 20 seconds to erase an 80min CD at 4 speed! A slow time considering there are 24x speed re-writers on the market as of writing.

DATA CD-RW
Next we wanted to measure how long it would take to write a full 80-mins of data onto a CD-Rewriteable. The following illustrates this test:

Here we copied the exact same contents of the CD-R test disk and as you can see the Pioneer A04/104 took 21 mins and 10 seconds to write a full 80min data CD-RW.

Note: Although the Pioneer A04 took over 21mins to write to the High Speed (HS) re-writeable CD, this is more than what the Pioneer A03 could achieve as it didn't support HS disks.

PRESSED DATA CD READING
Reading a pressed CD should be an easy task for any drive due to the good reflectivity/quality of the disks - this was the first of our read tests:

As you can see it managed an average of 18.12 speed using CAV. Towards the end of the CD it actually exceeded its maximum stated read speed of 24. The dip in the graph you see is due to the CD being slightly scratched and dirty (minor scratches). Note: We did experience difficulties in creating the test disk as CD Speed kept refusing and so we used another cd writer to create it.

CD-R Media Data Reading
The speeds often achieved with pressed CD-ROM media are not always mirrored with CD-R media due to quality and reflectivity issues (here we tested a TDK branded data CD-R):

The drive had no problem reading the disk at the same speed as pressed CDs. Although right at the end of the CD it had problems, it was not enough to affect the test. The average CD-R data reading speed was 18.88.

CD Digital Audio Extraction
The drive was next tested for its ability to extract audio from CDs and its quality was reported below. This test was done using "CD Speed" by Ahead.

Here is one test the (older) Pioneer A04 wins. Its overall average DAE speed in this test is 17.28 speed using the Ritek test CD-R and the drive is good for feeding a burner at 10 speed on the fly - which is better than the Philips DVDRW228k. The quality score is perfect and not all drives can achieve this as its quite a demanding test. The drive is capable of reading CD-TEXT and reading subchannel data.

Pressed Audio CD
Again we tested the DAE, but instead of using the tester CDR disk we used a pressed audio CD. The overall average reading speed is lower than the Philips since it is a 24x reader, but it does exceed this rating towards the end of the disk.

C2 Error Information
Next we examined the ability of the drive to accurately extract audio information. This is aided by something called C2 error information which is on a CD. If your drive can report C2 information then it will be faster and more accurate at ripping audio.

We used Exact Audio Copy's "Detect Read Features" option to examine what the drive could do. The drive caches audio which is not ideal as it can affect audio ripping. It has an accurate stream, but unfortunately it can not report any C2 error information from CDs.

90 & 99min CD-Rs are manufactured differently and have a finer track definition and a shorter lead out area. This test demands two things: approved media and a drive that's capable of overburning in DAO mode (sometimes you have to write at a slow speed).

Overburning stores data in the leadout area, (the leadout area according to the redbook) contains nothing but zeros and must be 90 seconds long. Overburning uses this leadout to store data.

We used Nero CD Speed to simulate writing to an 80min+ Mirror Max CD-R:

The Pioneer does support 90min CDs and during the overburning test it managed to write up to 92mins on the 80min++ CDR (using 8x speed).

99min CD-Rs

Writing
We tried an "official" (these kind of CDs are way out of the original CD standard) 99-min CD-R and tested the ability of the drive to cope with it:

The Pioneer DVD writer is good at overburning and managed to write a full 99mins worth of data onto a disk at 8x speed - this is slightly more than the Philips DVDRW228k. We verified this figure by actually writing 863MB onto a CD-R disk as shown above.

Reading

In this test we created a disk (x8 writing) using Nero and filled it up to 99.23 mins of data and checked how well the Pioneer could read the disk:

The drive managed to read the full data and only had slight problems when it came to running the seek test. This is one of the best results for this particular test we have ever seen.

CloneCD
CloneCD is a popular program for backing up protected CDs. We checked the capabilities of the drive under CloneCD:

One of the most disappointing things about the Pioneer A04 is that it does not support the DAO-RAW mode and even though it says RAW-SAO compatible the drive doesn't support any RAW mode.

Just as the Pioneer A03 did, when the drive was given the task of writing a CloneCD image it failed with an error shown above.

Reading
We checked the read performance of the popular Safedisk 2 protected game: MaxPayne. Intelligent Bad Sector scanner was turned off and Fast Error Skip was turned on so as to compare it with the other drives.

The drives performance at reading protected CDs has improved since the A03 but the test CD we tried took a very long time using I.B.S off and fast error skip turned on and we had to abort the test. When we re-tried with I.B.S. on, the drive did much better:

Safedisk 2 Read Speed
I 19:14:50 Device Scan found 0 CD-ROMs and 1 CD-Writers!
I 19:17:54 Starting copy from PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104 to C:\maxpayne.ccd
I 19:17:54 Read Speed for Data Tracks: Maximum
I 19:17:54 Read Speed for Audio Tracks: Maximum
I 19:17:54 Read SubChannel Data from Data Tracks: Yes
I 19:17:54 Read SubChannel Data from Audio Tracks: Yes
I 19:17:54 Fast Error Skip: Yes
I 19:17:54 Don't report read errors: Yes
I 19:17:54 Intelligent Bad Sector Scanner: Yes
I 19:17:54 CD contains CD-Text: No
I 19:17:54 Reading Track 1... (Blocks 0-358329)
W 19:17:54 Device PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104 doesn't support reading of 96 bytes subchannel data (CD+G)!
I 19:18:20 Fast Error Skip has been enabled automatically!
I 19:55:28 Fast Error Skip has been disabled automatically!
I 20:30:26 Duration of operation: 01:12:31
I 20:30:26 Average Speed: 193 kBytes/s (1.10)
I 20:30:26 Reading finished!

Philips DVDRW228k: Average Speed: 756 kBytes/s (4.30)

Pioneer A04: Average Speed: 193 kBytes/s (1.10)

The drive took 01:12:31 to read the CD in and needed I.B.S on. This is much slower than what the other DVD writers can achieve but it's still an improvement over the A03.

Region Protection
Most new DVD-ROM drives are region protected and will only playback a DVD movie title from a certain region. This is controlled by the use of region codes.

This drive has RPC-II region protection (RPC-2 devices allow you to change the drive's region a certain number of times before they become permanently locked).

DVD Capabilities

Reading
Next we tried various flavours of DVD disks, these included: DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD+R, DVD-RAM and a pressed DVD-ROM disk for our read tests.

DVD-R
Firstly we checked its performance with a DVD-R disk with Nero DVD Speed:

The drive's overall speed was slow compared to many DVD-ROMs and DVD writers - here it got 2.06 speed throughout the DVD-R disk (using CLV).

DVD-RW
Its read speed performance for "-RW" disks was identical to the "-R" disks. In this test it had an average speed of 2.06.

DVD-ROM
The Pioneer A04's DVD-ROM specifications state that it is a 6 speed reader and as you can see it does manage to achieve this speed.

We think the A04 would have been an extremely slow drive for reading DVDs if it weren't for this test where it redeems itself slightly. It also uses CAV for reading DVD-ROMs as opposed to CLV for DVD-R & DVD-RW disks and manages a decent average 4.77 speed.

DVD+RW
The drive can read the oppositions re-writable "DVD+RW" disks - also at x2.06 using CLV.

DVD+R
This was the most surprising test of all, the drive managed to read the write-once "+R" disks a lot faster (using CAV) than its own "-R" disks and also faster than what the Philips DVD+RW writer can. As you can see from above, it managed an average of 4.79 speed.

DVD-RAM
For completeness we checked how it behaved with a DVD-RAM disk out of its caddy (the Toshiba SDM-1612 DVD-ROM can read DVD-RAM disks like this). We didn't expect the A04 to read them and it didn't.

ERASING DVD-RW Disks
Full Erase
We timed how long it took to do a full erase of a DVD-RW disk:

A full erase took 56 mins and 40 seconds - this is much longer than the "+" standards 23 mins.

Quick Erase
Erasing DVD-RWs in quick mode only takes as little as 8 seconds.

DVD CSS RIPPING
Next we examined the speed at which the drive could rip movies with the content scrambling system (CSS).

There are legitimate uses for ripping movies to the hard disk, for example you might want to rent a DVD movie and watch it at a later date. In this case programs like CladDVD XP or DVD Decrypter will come in handy for storing it to your hard disk.

I 16:18:12 Found 1x DVD-RW!
I 16:19:59 Operation Started!
I 16:19:59 Source Device: [1:0:0] PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-104 1.20 (D
I 16:19:59 Destination Folder: C:\ULTIMATE_T2\VIDEO_TS
I 17:08:53 Operation Successfully Completed! - Duration: 00:48:53
I 17:08:53 Average Read Rate: 2,612 KB/s (1.9x) - Maximum Read Rate: 2,816 KB/s (2.0x)

Pioneer DVR-A03 Average Rip Speed: 2.1 x
Panasonic LF-D311 Average Rip Speed: 5.8 x
Philips DVDRW228k Average Rip Speed: 2.2 x
Pioneer DVR-A04 Average Rip Speed: 1.9 X
The is a poor result for the A04 and it is the worst DVD writer for ripping movies.

DVD-Video Dual Layer Reading
Above we tested the drive's performance with a dual layered movie (the movie title was "Terminator 2 : Ultimate Edition Disk 1"). As you can see it uses CLV at 2x speed to read both layers - this is within its specifications.

Playstation 2
We copied the game "Tekken 4" using a DVD-R disk and it booted successfully on our PAL Playstation 2 (swap trick aided by Action Replay). We also made a backup onto DVD-RW but the Playstation 2 can not read re-writable disks without drive modifications (we are told it does play -RW disks but only on the latest consoles).

X-BOX
Microsoft's X-Box games console is also capable of reading DVD disks. The console comes with a Thomson / Philips DVD-ROM drive that can read various media but has been designed specifically to ignore certain media types i.e. CD-R media.

The consoles games are stored on single layered (dual layered is possible but not used) DVD-ROM disks that have been written from the outside-in - a scheme once employed by the defunct Dreamcast console (done to prevent piracy).

Unlike the Playstation, you can not make 1:1 copies using disk copying software on the PC, you must transfer the files from the console first (download from the net, use an alleged hacked firmware, transfer to the PC using an Ethernet or dev kit).

The Pioneer A04 can produce X-Box backup DVDs and both DVD-RW and -R disk types produced were recognised and booted by our homebrew modded X-Box. We found that between the -R and the +R disks we tested, the X-Box favoured the -R format and would be the disks every time 1st time. (This is more to do with media as almost all the +R disks currently are rebranded Riteks).

DVD Writing Performance
To test the drive's writing performance we used Nero 5.5.9.0 and wrote 4469MB of data to the disk and timed it.

With DVD-R you can select a slower speed just like CD-Rs and above Record Now Max says the x2 disk will take 31mins and 30 seconds, in reality it only took 28mins and 42 seconds to write a full 4469MB of data.

2 Speed Writing
Unlike the DVD+RW format's write once "+R" disks the "-R" disks can be written at single speed which they will take around 57 mins to fill a full DVD-R or at double speed where will take around 28 mins to write a full DVD-R. Two speed writing is a Pioneer specific invention and only a few disks can be written to at this speed. When Pioneer released the A03 there was an uproar as people felt that they should have control over what speed to burn at and risk the consquences of making an unreliable disk.

Pioneer didn't release any information or label their packaging appropriatley at the time to inform customers that they could only write at x2 with the most expensive media. Now things are different and Pioneer is informing their customers that x2 recording is only possible on a few disks:

"With the launch of the DVD-103 DVD-R/RW drive, Pioneer has included a feature allowing 2X recording of DVD-R. This feature has been brought about by Pioneer’s own engineering endeavor. Within each drive is media specific optimizations called ‘write strategies’. These write strategies are tailor made for specific media, making 2X DVD-R recording possible.

Currently the DVD forum’s specification for DVD-R is 1X DVD-R recording. Pioneer was able to base its 2X DVD-R recording feature on the DVD forum’s specification, making it possible to include this benefit to its customers.

To make 2X DVD-R record compatible ‘For General’ media, the following steps must be completed before consideration. First, the media must pass the DVD forum’s verification for 1X DVD-R. Once cleared, with the media maker’s cooperation, Pioneer fine tunes the media for 2X recording, then confirms the mass production DVD-R media. Only after passing these tests media is considered 2X DVD-R compatible media.

Due to the use of this development system, depending on the media’s release date, 2X DVD-R recording may not be possible. Unlike high speed CD-R recording, 2X DVD-R recording requires optimization. Without optimization, the possibility exists that the recorded media will lack the desired playback quality. This system has been implemented in order to avoid customer confusion over DVD-R media that is deemed not compatible with 2X recording.

Pioneer will make its best effort to make it more understandable to the end user by making this information available in our instruction manual, product packaging, and other methods of communication. We will continue to contact various media manufacturers to increase the number of 2X record compatible DVD-R media. Pioneer suggests use of the following DVD-R media for 2X recording. This list shall be updated as more 2X DVD-R media becomes available.

Of the media manufacturers listed above, there does exist media that is not 2X DVD-R compatible.

To confirm whether or not the media intended for use is 2X DVD-R compatible, please ask at the point of purchase.

The 2X DVD-R record feature is a media specific feature.
Depending on the media used, the record speed may default to 1X."

Media Quality
We feel the quality of some of the DVD-R media out is very poor and often you will not notice there is a problem until you manage to write to the outer edges of the DVD (near the maximum capacity of the disk i.e. 4,400MB). Disk writing would often be successful but whilst reading the data back using a verification process you will find that data written on the outer edges will fail and become unreadable.

This problem only existed with the cheapest spindle DVD-R media and some of the more expensive media worked perfectly every time.

Compatibility Test
Compatibility is one area that has been much debated between the recordable formats ("minus" and "plus") below we have added the "Pioneer DVR-A04". Please note: this table is not done from user contributions.

PC DVD-ROM RECORDABLE FORMATS COMPARISON
Drive Tested -R +R -RW +RW
Toshiba SDM-1612 YES YES YES YES‡
Pioneer 116 YES YES YES NO
PSX2 YES YES NO NO
X-BOX YES YES YES YES
Philips DVDRW228k YES YES YES YES
Pioneer DVR-A04 / 104 (NEW) YES YES YES YES

‡Only with the latest firmware upgrade (version 1806 or later).

CONCLUSION

Pros
Supports writing 99min CDs
Fast & perfect audio ripping
Can produce X-Box & Playstation compatible disks
Can read & write CD-Text
Disks are more compatible than "+" format
Low cost drive
Very cheap media (as low as 50p each)
Can read full 99mins from data CDs

Cons
Only 2 speed -R, -RW, +RW, dual layered read performance
No CD-R RAW modes
Slow x2 speed CSS ripping
Slow Safedisk 2 performance
Poor quality media
High full seek time
Slow -RW (x1) writing
No Mount Rainer

We had hoped Pioneer would have included faster reading and writing speeds when the A04 was announced but rather than being a completely new drive the Pioneer A04 offers only a few improvements over the A03 drive (which we reviewed last year). Of these new improvements UDMA33, vertical mounting, CD-R burnproof support and increased DVD-ROM read speeds are the only real improvements a user will notice.

Although the drive can write 4.7GB of data onto blank DVD-R's we experienced problems with certain media when reading them back. Certain brands of media would jump/skip on DVD players with even the best PC DVD-ROMs would having difficulty reading the disks at certain points. This is not a problem with the drive but something which needs to be looked at when backing up important data onto cheap DVD-R / DVD-RW media (especially near the disks maximum capacity).

One strength the Pioneer drive has over the rival "plus" recordable format is the ability to create highly compatible DVDs - we found that disks created with this drive worked in most DVD players and older DVD-ROMs with their recognition time being the fastest. This was also the only DVD writer that could read a full 99mins from non standard CD-R 99min CDs (its CD features are a little old but not entirely useless).

The drive was very quiet and problem free. Pioneer has not improved on its CD writing ability and it still lacks a DAO-RAW mode which most drives have now (to make it a true replacement for your CD burner). The re-writable 1 speed DVD-RW process is painfully slow when you have used a drive from the plus recordable format but thankfully it only takes 28mins to create a "-R" disk. Pioneer and other companies are working on faster DVD writers that will write at 4 speed DVD-R and 2 speed DVD-RW which we expect to arrive this autumn though.

This drive currently retails for £199.00 in the UK and with 2 speed 4.7GB disks only £1.09 each it is hard not to recommend this drive. For those that want to know if you can backup their movie collection and if this drive does the job: yes it does sort of but you will need to do a little work yourself as its not as simple as selecting copy in Nero and swapping disks like it is with CDs (find out more in our forum).

Why use 7 CDs and swap between them for storing your data when you can use a Pioneer A04 and burn the whole lot in 28mins ? DVD writing is affordable thanks to Pioneer and any prospective buyer will not be disappointed with this drive.