CNET editors' review
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CNET editors' rating:
stars
Very good
Detailed editors' rating
- Reviewed on: 04/01/2003
- Updated on: 04/07/2003
- Released on: 03/01/2003
The SW-252 is one of the few drives we've reviewed recently that includes all of the necessary installation hardware. In the box, there's an IDE cable, mounting screws, and an audio cable for connecting the drive to your sound card. You won't find an emergency-eject tool in there, but a bent paper clip works just as well. The SW-252 works with Windows 95 or later, and it's compatible with Microsoft's Mount Rainier (CD-RW as floppy) initiative.
The front panel of the SW-252 sports the usual eggshell color and features a headphone jack, a rotary volume control, a power/busy light, an emergency-eject port, and a tray-eject button. The back panel has all of the standard connectors: digital and analog audio ports, drive jumpers, and IDE and power connectors.
The Nero wizard makes burning discs easy for beginners.
But here's where the going gets good: Samsung bundles the full retail version of Ahead Software's Nero Burning ROM 5.5 with the drive. The excellent mastering package includes the user-friendly Nero Express for burning all manner of CDs and DVDs; InCD for packet-writing duties; and Nero Media Player for encoding, recording, and playing audio files. Nero EasyWrite Reader, the latest addition to the software suite, lets you read discs written with InCD, CD-MRW (Mount Rainier format from Microsoft), or other UDF packet-writing programs without installing the full InCD program.
The SW-252 uses JustLink buffer-underrun-compensation technology so that you can multitask without fear of creating coasters. The drive also writes using full CAV (Constant Angular Velocity) technology. In other words, no matter where on the disc the drive reads or writes data, the disc always spins at a constant rate. Zone CLV (Constant Linear Velocity) recording, on the other hand, slows or increases the rotational speed of the disc, which can result in more wear and tear on the drive's motor.
The Samsung SW-252 delivered mixed results in CNET Labs' tests. It wrote our large audio test file to CD-R in 1 minute, 39 seconds, just 1 second slower than the top-rated CenDyne Lightning V. However, it performed 12 percent slower than the CenDyne rewriting CD-RWs, 15 percent slower installing Microsoft Office 2000 SBE, and 17 percent slower ripping audio tracks. If you make heavy use of packet writing or rip lots of audio CDs, the lag can add up after a while. Still, the drive offers plenty of speed for most users.
Write tests (Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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Time to install Microsoft Office 2000 SBE (Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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DAE (digital audio extraction; 26-minute, 58-second track) (Shorter bars indicate better performance)
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All write tests are run with both the drive's recommended media (submitted by the manufacturer) and with Verbatim media, rated at the drive's maximum speed. For more details on how we test CD-recordable drives, see the CNET Labs site.
In addition to the usual one-year warranty, Samsung backs the SW-252 with toll-free, 24/7 phone support--one of the few companies to offer such complete coverage. At the time of this writing, however, we could not find any help for the SW-252 on the company's support Web site. Based on our experience with previous models' support, though, we expect some rudimentary FAQs, a downloadable PDF manual, and driver updates to show up on the site soon. Alas, we found no BIOS updates or how-to videos such as those found on TDK's Web site.
The Samsung Web site offers basic support but no information specific to the SW-252.
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