CD Write Tests

1. CD-DVD Speed - CD-R Media

The SH-S183L will write to CD-R media at 48x.  Looking at the write process in Nero, we see that writing starts at just under 22x and easily hits 49x at the end of the disc.  This resulted in a high average write speed of 37x.

In the actual write tests, the fastest this drive was able to write a full 695MB of data was 2:56 minutes.  This was just on par with the results of the SH-S182M.  Another area of testing is media compatibility.  To test media compatibility, I burned the same data onto a variety of other discs. The results are shown in the table below...

Media compatibility did not change much at all when compared to the SH-S182M.  Results were practically identical, with the drive failing to write to Philips 40x discs at their rated speed.  As will all drives I've tested, it was able to write to Imation "Music" 24x discs at 32x.  As I always recommend, stick with 48x or 52x media for the fastest burn times.

2. CD-DVD Speed - CD-RW Media

The SH-S183L uses the Z-CLV method of writing to rewritable CD-R media.  Using Verbatim Ultra Speed 32x media, we see that it eventually reaches 32x write speeds at approximately the 27min mark.  This resulted in an average speed of 28x.  The results here were identical to that of their previous model. 

A full 645MB of data was written in just under 3 1/2 minutes.  While certainly not the fastest, that's about average for a multi-format drive these days.  Performing a full erase on the media was quite speedy at just under four minutes. 

3. CD-DVD Speed - CD-R Write Quality

With CD media, this is measured by the number of C1 and C2 errors. All discs will report a certain number of C1 errors, but what you should be more concerned with is the number of C2 errors reported. If using Nero's Disc Quality Test, I recommend you perform the test using either 24x or 32x speeds. Also note that you will not be able to perform a quality test with this drive. To capture its write quality, I used a BenQ DW1640.  When attempting to precisely measure write quality, I recommend you stick to either BenQ or Lite-On drives.

After rigorously testing write quality using both Taiyo Yuden and Verbatim media, I can conclude that the write quality was certainly improved over their 182M, regardless of what firmware was loaded.  With Taiyo Yuden media, the quality score was 96 and with Verbatim media, which the 182M did struggle with, the quality score was 87.  This drive once again did favor Taiyo Yuden media over Verbatim when it came down to quality.

4. Overburning & 99min CD-R Media

The nice thing about these Samsung drives is that they do offer full over-burning support.  On top of that, they are one of the few that do write to a number of 99min CD-R media at higher speeds.  Using Melody branded discs capable of 48x write speeds, the SH-S183L had no difficulty writing a full 99 minutes of data.  As I do with all drive reviews, I test these discs both on the computer, as well as on the CD player in my car.  All tracks did play back flawlessly on both.

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