NEC-1300A, SONY AND PIONEER burner Comparisons

[defense]

I have used all of these burners including the Pioneer 106D and I just thought i'd post a quick comparison. First, I think all the burners are excellent and all burn great. The NEC is constructed the most cheaply, and I question how long it's duration will be when compared to the other burners, but I guess time will tell.

Basically, the first generation Sony's are the best constructed and clearly use more expensive internal parts. The early generation Sony..the 500A AND AX has issues with burning "NON SPECIFIED SONY" 4x media at 4x..but that isn't an issue with the DRU-510A OR THE 530-A. With that being said, the 530-A is a piece of junk IMHO. It is constructed poorly and that is because as other members have mentioned...Sony outsourced the production from Optorite on this drive. They dropped the ball on this one for sure. I'm interested to see how many people complain about this drive in the upcoming months.

Now the Pioneer 106D with firmware 1.07 is a great drive. The only issue I had with it is that it makes these "burn rings" on the write side of the media. I'm not sure why it does this but to me the burn side looks like crap. Kprobe and Nero CD Speed showed great results..the disks ripped..but it was more of an eye soar then anything. Apparently Pioneer burners are known for this and it isn't really any big thing. The "burn circles" were most apparent on Ritek burned media.

And last but not least..the NEC-1300A is really great for burning cheap media. I have been using the last generation matrix disks for testing and the Kprobe results were the lowest with the NEC-1300A. The Pioneer 106D also burns crappy media better then the Sony drives. I was definitely surprised to see those results. The NEC-1300A actually had the LONG..TEN media id added to its firmware with revision 1.06. This is probably why. Sony hasn't added this media although Pioneer may of.

So I guess the bottom line in summary is if you want a solid drive..stay away from the 530A....and go with any of the others. If you want to purchase less expensive media..go with the NEC-1300A..or even the Pioneer 106D. And if you want a rock solid build and stable drive that will burn any high quality media 4x rated at 4x and do so without any visible physical burn issues such as those burn circles the Pioneers create...then go with the Sony DRU-510A.

Hope this helps anyone comparing these drives.

[Milt]

Thanks Defense,
Nice summary. I still have the 'uopened 530a' I bought before Xmas, and was waiting some reviews. I also have a 510a in the wings. I really think the A07 is going to be the strongest on the market, but we will see.