MaximumPC 2002 09

Samsung SH-S223

We weren’t clamoring for faster DVD burns, but we’ll take ’em

W

e’ll admit we’ve been perfectly

content with Samsung’s SH-S203

DVD burner for more than a

year. Once we were writing 4.38GB of

data to a disc in five minutes flat, we

were feeling pretty satisfied with the

state of DVD technology. Nevertheless,

we’re not about to turn our nose up at a

performance increase. And that’s what

Samsung’s latest DVD burner, the SH-

S223, offers.

As you might have guessed from the

name, the SH-S223 represents a jump

from 20x to 22x DVD+/-R burn speeds.

In our tests, this effectively shaved

12 seconds off the time it took to fill a

single-layer DVD+R disc. The SH-S223

took 4:46 (min:sec) compared with the

SH-S203’s flat 5:00. In both cases, we used

16x media, the fastest-rated media that’s

readily available. And in both cases, the

drives’ “over-speed” feature enabled them

to burn data at higher than rated speeds.

In the course of its write, the SH-S223

steadily climbed from a starting speed of

8.38x to 20.7x.

Besides the boost in DVD+/-R speeds,

however, the SH-S223 has identical speed

ratings to its predecessor for all other types

of media. In our DVD+R DL write test,

the SH-S223’s 16x rating for that media

amounted to a write time of 13:13 using 8x

media, a mere three seconds slower than the

SH-S203. Again, the SH-S223’s over-speed

feature kicked in, with a good portion of the

burn occurring at 10x speed.

The SH-S223 is rated

at 8x for DVD+RW and 6x

for DVD-RW. We tested the

drive with DVD-RW media

rated at 4x. This time, rather

than burning beyond the

disc’s speed rating, the SH-

S223 stuck to it, maintain-

ing a 4x speed throughout

and writing 4.38GB to the

rewriteable disc in 14:56.

This isn’t all that surprising, as drives typi-

cally perform much more conservatively

with rewriteable media, given its greater

propensity for write errors.

Like the SH-S203 before it, the

SH-S223 connects to a PC using a SATA

interface and comes bundled with a host

of Nero apps.

While we see no need to graduate from a

20x DVD burner—particularly the SH-S203—

to the SH-S223, this is the drive to get if

you’re currently using anything less than an

18x model. – K A T H E R I N E S T E V E N S O N

The SH-S223 is

indistinguishable

from its prede-

cessor in looks

and the majority

of its features.

96 | MAXIMUMPC | FEB 09 | http://www.maximumpc.com

IN THE LAB^

REVIEWS OF THE LATEST HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE

+ -

VERDICT

$80, http://www.samsung.com

9

All the goodness of

the SH-S203, plus

faster DVD+/- writes.

We’d have preferred

speed improvements

across the board.

BIG BEN

SAMSUNG SH-S223

BIG BROTHER

Best scores are bolded. All tests were conducted using Nero CD DVD Speed and Verbatim media. Our test bed is a Windows XP SP2 machine using a 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700, 2GB of Corsair

DDR2/800 RAM on an EVGA 680 SLI motherboard, one EVGA GeForce 8800 GTS card, a Western Digital 500GB Caviar hard drive, and a PC Power and Cooling Turbo Cool PSU.

BENCHMARKS

Samsung SH-S223 Samsung SH-S203

DVD+R Write Speed Average 14.94x 13.45x

DVD+R Read Speed Average 12.16x 12.13x

Access Times (random/full) 117/204ms 116/198ms

DVD+DL Write Speed Average 9.12x 9x