Labs

Aopen's DSW2012P is one of the cheapest burners in the group at £22. However, while it was the second-fastest internal writer at burning CD-R discs, it wasn't very quick at writing DVDs. It was one of the slowest internal drives at writing single-layer DVDs, DVD-RW and DVD+R DL discs. It was faster writing DVD+RW and DVD-R DL discs, with 6.57X and 5.5X, but other DVD writers in the group were much faster than the DSW2012P in these tests.

Although the DSW2012P doesn't come with any accessories such as alternative front panels or mounting screws, the bundled software includes Ahead's Nero Recode for compressing an 8.5GB DVD movie to fit on a 4.7GB disc. Although this is a useful extra, it can't compensate for this drive's disappointing DVD writing speeds.

Aopen's DSW2012P is cheap and very fast at writing CD-R discs, but has slow DVD writing performance. There are better drives here.