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Lite-On LTR-52327S CD-RW & LTC-48161H Combo CD-RW/DVD Review
Author: Matt
Date Posted: May 20th, 2003
| SLRating - LTR-52327S 52x32x52 CD-RW: |
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| SLRating LTC-48161H 48x24x48x16 Combo CD-RW/DVD: |
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Bottom Line:
Lite-On comes out with two new drives and we bring you an exclusive premier
of the LTR-52327S 52x32x52 CD-RW, and following that, a look at their jack of
all trades LTC-48161H 48x24x48x16 Combo CD-RW/DVD drive. We'll show you how
they compare against each other and some of the competition...
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Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6
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Packaging/Appearance/Installation/Documentation
Package:
The LTR-52327S packing is fairly simple, as you might expect. The box contains
the drive, mounting screws, audio out cable, installation instructions, troubleshooting
manual, 700MB 80 minute 52x CD-R disk, 650MB 74 minute 32x CD-RW disk, Nero
Express, and finally some Lite-On customer feedback cards.
The packing is nearly the same for the LTC-48161H. The box contains the drive,
mounting screws, audio out cable, installation instructions, troubleshooting
manual, 700MB 80 minute 52x CD-R disk, 650MB 74 minute 24x CD-RW disk, Nero
Express, Lite-On customer feedback cards, and also PowerDVD XP.
Appearance:
The drives are typical looking. Present on the front is a mini-jack audio out
port, a volume dial, dual colored read/write LED, Lite-On logo stickers and
either a 52x32x52x insignia or the DVD logo.
One thing interesting that you will notice immediately after taking the drives
out of the box and comparing them to other drives is that they are about 25
millimeters shorter than a typical drive.
While other drives are all about 195 mm, the Lite-On drives are only 170 mm.
This could be rather nice in small form factor cases where an extra inch of
space behind the drive can open up room for airflow or other devices. Even in
my full tower case the extra inch that the drives aren't sticking out is nice
because it clears away clutter from in front of the motherboard.
Installation
The screws provided were welcome because drive manufacturers are often very
inconsistent with their screw sizing and it can be difficult to find screws
that won't strip your drive's holes.
The drives installed cleanly, my motherboard detected the hardware vender string
in the drives and displayed the models correctly during boot up. Windows XP
correctly identified the drives and installed the appropriate drivers without
a hitch.
Nero Express went in cleanly, only after removing a previous version of Nero
I had already installed. One note to mention here is that I had a TDK burner
before and my TDK version of Nero definitely did not like the Lite-On drives.
It was no problem to remove the old hardware and software and cleanly install
the new drives and Nero though. I did not have to install separate versions of Nero Express for each drive,
despite the warnings on the CD that Nero would only work with the drive it came
bundled with. Nero appears to be compatible with any of the Lite-On drives.
Documentation
The manual is rather comical, it is simply a collection of safety, installation,
use and troubleshooting documentation. It is actually pretty comprehensive though,
a nice addition since previous Lite-On drives only came with a one sheet manual.
It is good to see that Lite-On learned from our previous gripes about bad documentation.
Additional documentation comes in the form of a straight forward "Quick
Installation Guide" poster.
There is no paper documentation for Nero Express, but it is VERY easy to use,
as is the case with PowerDVD too.
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