NEC ND 4550 DVD writer review

Conclusion

During the course of this review we have given an indepth analysis of both single layer DVD+/-RW media. We have also shown you some DVD RAM results and a just a few CDR/RW results also. So we are using the conclusion to point out the highs and lows we found whilst reviewing the media quality and compatibility of the NEC ND-4550 with firmware 1.06.

Amongst things we didnt show you are the error correction and copy protection capabilities of the NEC ND-4550. This was never the idea of this review - we just wanted to see how this drive behaved from a media quality and compability point of view. A quick search in google will show sites such as CDfreaks, CDRLabs and CDR-info offer reviews that fully tests these capabilities. As we will probarly never be the first to release a review of a drive due to the amount of media we test, we didnt want to reinvent the wheel - we just wanted a good old media test!

So what did we think?

NEC's latest drive really does live up to its claim as a multi format writer with support for all formats we tested with. It also supported most of our tested media at at least its rated speed with a couple of exceptions which we make mention of during the review. Taking into account the amount of media we tested, we would like to say that the NEC ND-4550 offers the end user at least 98% compatibility during this review.

The NEC ND-4550, just like the older NEC drives that have proved so popular with end users features the NEC Active Optimum Power Calibration which helps maintian the best possible recoding to any given media. It also supports bitsetting of DVD+R Double Layer media to DVD-ROM for better compatibility with older or fussy DVD players. That said it doesn't allow bitsetting for DVD+R or DVD+RW media which is something all DVD writing devices should be capable of in our opinion.

The speed freaks wont like it because it cant overspeed media that other competitors can and doesn't come with any software to let you tweak or measure the quality of your recordings. This review has been done an immature early firmware and we would hope that quality will improve even more as newer firmwares become available.

The Highs

8x recording at a near 400% overspeed was achieved on the Verbatim 2.4x rated Double Layer media and with some very good quality was achieved. This knocks over 25 minutes off the recording time of this media compared to its rated speed. A very big high! Add to this the 100% overspeed of the Plextor and Miflop 8x DVD+R media, again with very good results and youi already have 3 recommended media for this drive. The Sony and Maxell 8x DVD-R media both achieved 16x. Although not with the same quality achieved by the Plextor and Miflop 8x DVD+R media, they where still very readable recordings for 100% overspeeds.

A good range of faster than rated speed recording on a range of 4x and 8x media is actually something that you see alot of doing this review and it softens the blow of one of the lows we are about to mention. DVD RAM support is always a bonus and although we don't have a big list of DVD RAM media to throw at this drive, we can at least show that the media we tested recorded without incident at their rated speed over a series of uses.

The NEC ND-4550 is a very quick overall multi format reading device. 16x was achievable for all single layer write once media at an average read time of 5 mins and some recordings we thought might slow down during transfer went without a hitch. That must be the jitter correction chip at work! DVD+/-RW media had near 13x reading speeds and makes this drive one of the fastest DVD+/-RW readers around. DVD+/-R DL read support at just over 7x is certaintly fast enough but some drives do let you read at 12x for these formats.

Oh and just a quick mention that the riplock or quite drive feature haunting older NEC DVD writers has been removed in this drive. No more 2x reading of DVDs containg encryption.

The Lows

Maybe we are being unfair here but an average 8x recording speed of 9 mins 57 seconds seems a little on the conservative side in our opinion. This same 8x recording strategy has been present since early NEC models and with many other competitors writing 8x media in just over 8 minutes, the NEC really does seem to drag. That said speed in't everything but we feel it could be 20% faster at least without sacrificing any quality. For comparison on the quality Vs speed we achieved with other writers using many of the media in the review check here.

The Verbatim 4x DVD-R Dual Layer recording could of been better. Over 3 tested pieces we achieved quite poor results compared to tests we have done on other recording devices. One minor grumble is that the NEC ND-4550 is slightly slower than previous drives at 16x recording.

The Traxdata 8x DVD+RW media being made unusable after 2 rewrites. Wether this is the NEC format function or just poor compatibility, we really couldn't get this media to work in this writer under present firmware.

No bitsetting of DVD+R media to DVD ROM. This really does help compatibility with older or fussy standalone DVD players. If you would like to have Bitsetting ability with this drive you will have to use an enhanced firmware from the good folks over at the Liggy and Dee-27 website.

We would like to take this chance to once again thank the good folk at SVP communications for sending us this drive plus a multitude of media to review it with. If you require both A grade and cheap media in Europe, this is the place worth checking out. You will find a very big selection of the media used in this review at SVP right now.

Sponsors of this review

We would also like to thank companies such as Connrexx/Ritek Europe for all the Ritek based media, Verbatim Europe for all the Verbatim branded media, Medea International for the Infiniti and HP branded media and not forgetting our very good friends at Miflop Media for making sure we have a never ending supply of Taiyo Yuden based media.

This review would be very small indeed without the help of such good friends who are endlessly willing to send us the required amounts of media we constantly ask for!