Product Reviews

Last month we reviewed three dual-layer DVD writers, two of which were internal units from LG and Sony that offered excellent performance and value for money. This month we have two new drives, the Philips DVDRW885 and TDK's DVD RW882N. Both are more expensive, so we tested to find out if they can justify the higher prices.

The TDK distinguishes itself with its highly polished fascia, split horizontally into black and dark grey bands. It looks uncluttered and different, which makes its conventionally placed LED seems very ordinary as a result. The drive achieved, by a small margin, the fastest rewriteable times we've recorded, burning a 4.5GB DVD+RW disc in 13 minutes 41 seconds and DVD-RW in 14 minutes.

At 43 minutes for an 8.5GB disc, DVD+R dual-layer performance is also among the best we've seen. Unfortunately its single-layer DVD+R write time of 10 minutes 25 seconds, for 4.5GB, is the slowest we've measured by almost a minute, and its

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DVD read speed is also a little behind the competition.

Although Philips claims that the DVDRW885 is the world's first dual-layer DVD writer, it's only just becoming available in the UK, well after the arrival of drives from several competitors. The drive will not create either DVD-R or DVD-RW discs until a firmware upgrade becomes available in September.

Its performance in our DVD+R test was good, taking just eight minutes 25 seconds to burn 4.5GB to a single-layer disc. Although it reads DVD+R discs faster than the TDK does, this is offset by the slowest DVD+RW creation we've timed, a leisurely 14 minutes 26 seconds. The drive also recorded our slowest time to write a dual-layer 8.5GB disc and is further let down by a slow 10X CD-RW burn speed.

Its fascia has one of the most logical status indicators we've seen. Separate blue LEDs indicate whether the inserted disc is a CD or DVD, and a section between them glows blue when accessing and red when burning. This looks great, but the drive is otherwise ordinary and the lack of DVD-R and DVD-RW support is a serious weakness.

Both drives come bundled with software that includes Nero Vision Express, Nero Media Player and InCD4. The TDK has Nero Burning ROM Express, while Philips includes the more fully featured OEM version.

The TDK is an attractive but unexceptional drive, while the Philips is one to avoid until it offers multiformat burning as standard. Neither drive can match the performance of the LG GSA-4120B, which has now dropped in price to £59 inc VAT.