M
ost folks aren’t prepared to choose sides in the battle between Blu-ray and HD
DVD—and who can blame ’em, given the scarcity of HD content and the exor-
bitant cost of drives and media. But for the gotta-have-it-now early adopters, Blu-ray
remains the only next-gen disc you can burn. The HD DVD camp has yet to release
a burner, while Sony’s BWU-100A marks the third Blu-ray burner we’ve reviewed in
the last six months. And with each new model, we’re seeing improvements.
The BWU-100A is the nicest-looking HD optical drive we’ve tested, with
a sleek, stylish bezel that would do right by any case faceplate. It’s also the
least expensive: The comparably
spec’d Plextor PX-B900A wereviewed in our December 2006 issue is still priced at a grand; the BWU-100A
costs $750. Granted, that’s still a pretty penny for a product of dubious usefulness.
And, sadly, nothing about this drive’s performance makes it any more
compelling than the others we’ve reviewed. Like the Plextor and IO Data drives
we tested in December (both were actually rebadged versions of the same
Panasonic model), the BWU-100A reads and writes to CD, DVD, and Blu-ray
media (both single- and double-layer) at theoretical maximum speeds of 24x,
8x, and 2x, respectively. In reality, the BWU-100A filled a single-layer DVD+R
in 9:08 (min:sec), with an average write speed of 6.78x. And using the bundled
CyberLink Power2Go burning software, we filled a 22.5GB BD-R disc in 42:19. It
took an hour and 33 minutes to burn the same data to rewritable media.
So if you’ve got time to kill or want to author your own HD video discs, Sony’s
BWU-100A is the best bargain we’ve tested, but if you’re primarily interested in
convenient, large-capacity data storage, you’re far better off with an
external hard drive.
—Katherine StevenSonSony BWU-100A
Blu-ray Drive
Still a little too ‘next-gen’ for our blood
W
e liked almost everything about SanDisk’s Sansa e260 flash-memory
digital media player when we reviewed it in November 2006, but we
slapped it with a verdict of 5 because we activated its voice recorder every
time we picked the damned thing up. The Sansa e280R fixes that problem
and adds two more gigs of memory for good measure.
The e280R also features a special connection to Rhapsody, our favor-
ite music-rental service: The player comes preloaded with Rhapsody chan-
nels and playlists, which you can synchronize with your Rhapsody library.
If you’re already a Rhapsody To Go subscriber—or if you’re not interested
in becoming one—SanDisk’s e280 is the very same device minus the pre-
loaded music.
Rhapsody has two paid subscription models: With the Unlimited plan,
you can stream and download as much music as you’d like to up to three
PCs for $10 per month. The To Go plan allows you to transfer the tracks to
up to three digital media players. DRM strings attached to both plans see to
it that your listening rights expire when your subscription ends and prohibit
you from burning tracks to CD unless you purchase them. The e260R comes
with a free two-month subscription to the To Go plan.
SanDisk fixed the voice-recorder problem by tweaking the player’s firm-
ware to give you the option of having a window pop up that asks you to confirm
your intent to record. You can also turn the record feature off altogether. Wealso noticed, however,
that the button on this unit
offers much more resis-
tance than the previous
model’s, so you might not
need to fiddle with these
settings at all.
We still don’t like
the e280R’s undersized
buttons, which are situ-
ated too close to the scroll
wheel for our not-so-big
thumbs, but the audio and
video quality is just as good as the e260’s, and the microSD card slot is
superhandy. With a street price hovering around $200, the e280R is
one of the best flash-based media
players on the market.
—Michael BrownSanDisk Sansa
e280R Rhapsody
Some products deserve a second chance
62 MAXIMUMPC april 2007
reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
the BwU-100a: it looks great, but it’s just as slow as other
Blu-ray burners we’ve tested.it’s a safe bet that
the Sansa e280r’s
price will drop
even lower once
SanDisk ships the
wi-Fi-enabled Sansa
connect, which was
announced at ceS.8
sansa e280R Rhapsody
$250, http://www.sandisk.com7
sony BWU-100a BlU-Ray
$750, http://www.sonystyle.comDVD Write SpeeD AVerAge 6.78x 6.76x 6.78x
DVD reAD SpeeD AVerAge 6.17x 6.15x 6.17x
AcceSS time (rAnDom/Full) 160ms/317ms 157ms/315ms 160ms/318ms
cpu utilizAtion (8x) 34% 47% 31%
time to burn 22.5gb to bD-r (min:Sec) 42:19 43:12 42:26
time to burn 22.5gb to bD-re (hour:min) 1:33 1:33 1:34
Best scores are bolded. Our test bed is a Windows XP SP2 machine, using a dual-core 2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-60, 2GB of Corsair
DDR400 RAM on an Asus A8N-SLI motherboard, an ATI X1950 Pro videocard, a Western Digital 4000KD hard drive, and a PC
Power and Cooling Turbo Cool 850 PSU.BenchMarKS
Sony io Data Plextor1.73”3.5”