CDFreaks take a look at the Sony DRU-820A multi-burner. The drive features single layer 4.7GB DVD burning at 16X, double layer and dual layer recording speed is 8X max. DVD+RW speeds are 8X and 6X max for DVD-RW. DVD-RAM recording is supported at 5X max, then to top it off, fast 48X CD-R burning and 32X CD-RW speeds can be achieved with this writer.

The Sony DRU-820A writes CD-R media extremely fast with excellent quality. CD-R and CD-RW media compatibility is also excellent, shown on all of our tested media the drive is capable to burn them at their rated speed. The drive also supports reading and writing special 99 minutes CD-R without any problem.

In general, DVD+R write quality is good and DVD-R media support is excellent, meaning that supports our DVD-R media at its rated speed. The drive has no riplock and can read DVD+R at 16x and DVD+RW/+DL at 12x speed. DVD-RAM was also very well planned and it supports writing at 5x. DVD-RAM reading is also very good and able to read our 3x media at speed 5x CLV.

DVD+R media compatibility is relatively poor, for the reason that some 16x rated DVD+R media are supported only at 8x: RICOHJPNR03, PHILIPSC16, OPTODISCR16, RITEKR04, and CMCMAGM01 to name a few. In the area of DVD-R, media support is very good; however writing quality is questionable as we notice that on some high speed (16x) dark rings appear on the data side of the disc meaning the firmware and writing strategies for the media are not optimized yet. We would like to mention that some DVD-R transfer tests show read-back problems at the end of the disc. Also at this moment there are no 12x writing strategies for 16x rated DVD+R media. These are something we are certain could be improved with a firmware update.