VisionTek Xtasy 48X/12X/48X EIDE

CNET editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.0 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Dong Van Ngo
• Reviewed on: 07/17/2002

An all-around fast CD burner is a rare bird these days. Most manufacturers sacrifice overall performance for one bright spot, such as straight burning speed, but the VisionTek Xtasy 48X CD-RW drive is one exception. This burner offers great performance in every area and features some cutting-edge technologies to boot--all for a reasonable price. So what's the catch? The drive delivers peak performance with only the right brands of CD-R media, and its poor documentation will confuse and frustrate novices. But if you're experienced with CD burners, the Xtasy 48X CD-RW drive will prove a good investment.An all-around fast CD burner is a rare bird these days. Most manufacturers sacrifice overall performance for one bright spot, such as straight burning speed, but the VisionTek Xtasy 48X CD-RW drive is one exception. This burner offers great performance in every area and features some cutting-edge technologies to boot--all for a reasonable price. So what's the catch? The drive delivers peak performance with only the right brands of CD-R media, and its poor documentation will confuse and frustrate novices. But if you're experienced with CD burners, the Xtasy 48X CD-RW drive will prove a good investment.

Bare essentials
At $159 ($129 after a $30 rebate), the VisionTek Xtasy is indeed reasonably priced, but you wont get anything fancy. The box contains just an IDE cord, an audio cable, mounting screws, one blank CD-R, a software installation CD--which includes Ahead Nero Burning ROM 5.5, InCD 3.1, and Adobe Acrobat 4.0--and a 13-page manual. The instruction booklet covers only hardware installation and troubleshooting; you're on your own with the software. Fortunately, Nero's wizard-laden interface is easy to use and guides you through most CD-burning tasks.

The drive itself, however, features some useful technologies. Burn-Proof helps prevent data loss due to buffer underrun. The drive's vibration-absorber system keeps it quiet and circumvents errors caused by rattling.

VisionTek's Smart-Burn technology, unfortunately, raises eyebrows. Smart-Burn automatically checks media quality, then sets a limit to burning speed to ensure successful writing and data integrity, but it's finicky; you must use the correct brand of CD-R media to get the best performance. In informal tests, we couldn't convince the drive to write to generic CD-Rs at its full 48X rate unless Smart-Burn was disabled.

Finicky but fast
With CD-Rs provided by VisionTek, the Xtasy excelled in CNET Labs' tests; it beat the best of the 40X/12X/48X clan on three out of four speed tests. The drive burned a 43-minute audio CD in only 1 minute, 48 seconds; wrote 400MB to a CD-RW in 5 minutes, 18 seconds; and ripped, or extracted, a 27-minute audio track in a mere 44 seconds. On the read test, however, the VisionTek Xtasy took about 1 minute, 51 seconds to install Microsoft Office 2000 Small Business Edition, trailing competing drives by about 20 seconds. The Xtasy also fully formatted CD-RW media in less than 2 minutes, as opposed to the 15 minutes that most CD-RW drives take. Continue reading

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• 1.5 stars

  "it a knock off with a visioncrap name name"

  on December 12, 2002

• 5.0 stars

  "Great Inexpensive Drive"

  on September 21, 2002

• 1.5 stars

  "company is gone out of business"

  on August 20, 2002

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