DVR-112D

The Pioneer DVR-112D DVD burner is the current champion when it comes to burning both single and double layer DVDs. It manages to outdo the competition due to its support for fast burn rates of up to 18x for single layer DVDs and 10x for double layer discs.

So far, it's the only burner that has successfully burnt at these speeds to our Verbatim 16x single layer DVDs and 6x double layer DVDs. Most of Pioneer's competitors burners top out at 16x and 6x, respectively, for those discs. Even the Sony DRU-830A, which has support for speeds up to 18x for single layer DVD writing, could only write to our single layer Verbatim media at 16x.

However, the time difference between 16x and 18x burn rates is not substantial. Our Verbatim DVD+R discs burnt 4GB of data at 18x in 5min 15secs, and in 5min 42secs at 16x. Its DVD-R performance was slightly faster than its DVD+R performance at 18x, where it burnt to this type of disc in 5min 07s. At 16x, the DVD-R burn completed in 6min 02s, which is a more noticeable difference.

If you regularly burn double layer DVDs, then this burner is head and shoulders above its competitors. A typical DVD+R DL burn at 8x will take 16min 10secs. If your media is detected at 10x, then the DVR-112D will shave 21 seconds off the burn time - it completed the fastest DVD+R DL burn in 15min 49secs. This is a good two minutes quicker burning to double layer media than the AOpen's DSW1812P, the next fastest DVD burner we have recently tested.

Data burnt to double layer discs was read back in a slightly slower time than we expected and, in fact, it was the slowest reading drive for these types of discs. The single layer read speed was fast compared to other drives we have seen with a 12x read rating for this type of media. While the double layer discs were burnt quickly, they weren't readable in our older Pioneer DVR-107D DVD burner.

As for its CD performance, the DVR-112D is capable of burning a full CD in three and a half minutes at a rate of 40x, while it can extract audio files from a CD in just over two and a half minutes.

Noise from the drive, even while it was spinning at its fastest rate, was not overly noticeable, and vibration from the drive was virtually non-existent in our Thermaltake Shark case.

Pioneer ships the drive with Nero Essentials 7, which will not install properly if you have a previous version of Nero on your system, so make sure you completely uninstall your Nero software if you're upgrading to this drive.

If you are looking for the fastest burner on the market, look no further. The DVR-112D will provide you with a noticeable improvement when burning to double layer media, and it will also burn to single layer media quicker than ever before.