NEC ND 4550 DVD writer review

Introduction

It's been a while since we have shown our readers a full DVD Writer review here at the CDR-Zone.com review section. Although we have shown many popular drives media performance in our DVD Media Review section we felt it was about time we did some drive specific reviews.

So in a brand new format we introduce our review of the NEC ND-4550 with firmware 1.06 which has very kindly been supplied by the good folk at SVP communications - Many thanks SVP!. New to this drive is DVD-RAM support and this wil enable us to have our first look at popular DVD-RAM media from such companies as Panasonic, Verbatim and Traxdata. The NEC ND-4550 also introduces increased DVD+/-R D/L writing as well as increased DVD+/-RW support. it also has a jitter correction chip incorporated and we will see how well this feature is working in more detail later on in this review.

Some information about the drive from the NEC website:

NEC leads the way with 4th generation 16x DVD writer:

• Now including new RAM functionality, the ND4550 is the most advanced drive on the market
• The fastest read and write speeds available
• NEC responsible for pushing forward innovation in DVD drive development

The new model incorporates 5x RAM functionality and supports all DVD and CD formats including plus and minus read/write for CD and DVD media as well as Dual-Layer, ROM and RAM. This versatility offers users the choice between a total of 11 optical storage functions in one drive.

The 4550 is the fastest DVD recorder on the market and is capable of burning 1 hour of DVD Video in just 6 minutes. The Dual-Layer function means users can store up to 8.5 GB onto one DVD disc. With it’s high-speed CD burning and reading capabilities, the 4550 is a versatile and cost-effective solution for burning CDs and DVDs, with no compromise on performance or capacity.

Of course these are only the claims of the drive manufacturers and quite often it can take a few firmware updates to achieve.The drive is new out and the firmware can be classed as immature with further improvements in later firmware updates to be expected. As this is now the 4th generation of NEC DVD writing devices, we would expect NEC to have a good understanding of how to record most popular media formats even with early firmware revisions.

NOTE :

We have done this review from a media quality and compatibility perspective only. We believe this is the main true judge of a writers quality. If you want to see how well it does with modern copy protection systems we suggest checking out other reviews. We mention some of these sites later on in the conclusion.

Our review drive came to us an OEM ( Original Equipment Manufacturer ) bare bone drive with no software, cables, screws or recordable media. This is designed to cut down on the price the end user who already has these extras and does not need them is required to pay in their purchase of this product.

The front of the drive is a now familiar plain bezel with no company branding on it. Also located on the front are the eject and emergency eject buttons. To the rear we find the expected jumper pins and audio connections as well as a power and IDE cable connection. Our drive was manufactered in china and is dated Sept 2005 coming supplied with the latest available firmware revision at the time of this review.

Read on to see our review drive coped with a wide selection of various available recording formats.