Packaging:
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The packaging reveals an important fact, this drive is actually manufactured by Panasonic. Archgon is simply responsible for the assembly and production of the housing. That being said, another important note, the back of this box would suggest that it will play (and potentially burn) Blu-Ray disks. It doesn’t.
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The inside packaging is just as you would expect, the drive itself is inside a simple plastic tray with the plastic sheet protecting the sleek black finish
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The package contents are minimalistic, under the plastic tray you have the Y usb cable and the Nero Essentials disk.
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The drive itself is very compact, and the sleek finish is a nice touch. This drive feels smaller than a DVD case, i’m impressed.
Testing:
Test Setup:
- MSI Wind Netbook (plugged in)
As is the standard these days this drive will handle both DVD’s and CD’s without issue, both + and – format. It will also burn either format of both DVD and CD. As mentioned above, inspection of the packaging could incorrectly give you the impression that this drive will read and write BLU-ray. I burned a cd and DVD of photos with no issues. I then used the burned DVD to test the drive.
I’m testing this drive using NERO disk speed. This utility was included with the Nero Essentials disk that was bundled with the drive.
Looking at the results of this four minute benchmark, they are very straight foraward. I tested using a 930Mb disk of photos, this did not allow the drive to reach its full speed capabilities but demonstrated the drive during every day use.
Conclusion:
This drive came from a relatively unheard manufacturer, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of product. Despite the slightly misleading packaging, the manufacturers specifications, as well as the instructions make no mention of the drives BLU-Ray compatibility, so I am willing to Ignore this oversight. The archgon drive is undoubtedly the underdog when compared with a recognized name of Lite-On, and the two drives were essentially identical. I believe the small size, and appearance conscious design set the drive apart from its competitors. It was not a hard decision to award the archgon Mobile Optical disk drive, the TechwareLabs approved hardware award.
