Read All Asus BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G Review
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Category: Personal Computers
Brand: Asus
Model: BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G
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Asus BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G Product reviews
Asus BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G Review by Suswyn
The external USB 3.0 drive is really fast and quiet. The only quirk with it is the included software did not autorun, and the Asus Firmware update link did not work.....maybe this drive is too new to need a firmware update but the software takes you straight there when you finally get it installed and the the Asus site cannot find the drive unless you type in the serial number then the page freezes. The actaul cyberlink (asus bundled) software looks great but the music player does not recognize mp3 files and you have to convert you audio files from mp3 to wma or wav in order to play them in this software (PowerDVD/Cyberlink Media suite).
Asus BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G Review by D Jones "DP Jones" (Alexandria, VA, USA)
Very good performance and easy installation. Looks sleek with its glossy black enclosure. USB 3.0 is a clear advantage for blu-ray disk burning. However, some enclosure design aspects detract from ease of use.
Bought this to use with a Lenovo W520 laptop workstation running Windows 7.0 Pro. I do HD video encoding and need a reliable external blu-ray burner with USB 3.0 for video disk production. For years I used non blu-ray LG burners with excellent results. LG's blu-ray burner is still USB 2.0 or I might have considered it.
This burner has a power adapter and USB 3.0 port on the back along with a power switch. It's packaged with a USB 3.0 cable, power adapter, and useful but limited set of Cyberlink software. Cyberlink offers a discount upgrade to their full software suite. I find the provided Cyberlink software right for my needs.
Installation was easy. My laptop recognized both the burner and its USB 3.0 connection. Cyberlink software installed without issue. Blank blu-ray DVD disks are more expensive than regular blank DVDs so disk burn reliability is a high priority. I've burned twenty blu-ray video DVDs using ProShow Producer and other video encoding software. All disks were produced quickly without errors. These work perfectly in both Sony and Sharp Blu-ray players.
There are three enclosure design aspects I don't like. They don't affect disk burning performance and are clearly subjective. First, the top of the player is not flat so I can't stack two of these like I do my bricklike LG burners. Second, the triangular blue LED light on top is very bright and distracting. I can tape over it but I'd prefer it be switchable. Third, the door opening switch is a long thin vertical plastic push contraption on the right side of the player. It lacks positive activation feedback. It is the same glossy black color of the case, is not easy to recognize, and requires a bit of fiddling to operate. It can take a few pushes to open the fold down door panel which allows the tray to slide out. I must take care when pushing this to avoid interference with the door panel opening function. This is overly complex, gimicky, and likely to be a failure point. Why not a simple highly visible pushbutton providing positive activation feedback with a simple slide out tray? Clearly, the designers overruled the engineers on this one.
In summary, if you need an external Blu-ray burner with fast USB 3.0 performance and require software to operate it, this may be the right choice. I prefer function over beauty regarding enclosures so I ding it a star, subjectively, in this department.
Asus BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G Review by testmaster (Nashua, NH USA)
I ran one experiment to confirm that USB 3.0 really is about 2.5x faster (as some web sites claim) to burn Blu-ray Discs (BD-R) than USB 2.0 (ie. the USB channel is the bottleneck, not the disk or cpu speed). Using an ASUS laptop with an i7 cpu, a USB 3.0 port and 4GB memory, I backed up 22.3 GB of data (5,339 files) to a BD-R at 12x maximum write speed using the included ASUS/Cyberlink Media Suite program Power2Go 7. It took 01:00 minute for Power2Go to "prepare" the data for writing (these times are not rounded off, though they coincidentally look like they are).
Actual write time to write 22.3GB to BD-R(SL) at 12x:
-- USB 3.0 : 11:00 minutes -- 2.0 GB/min or 120 GB/hr
-- USB 2.0 : 30:30 minutes -- 0.73 GB/min or 44 GB/hr
For this experiment, USB 3.0 wrote data 2.7x faster than USB 2.0.
For another experiment, the measured write speed for a BD-R(DL) disc was 90 GB/hr (38.0GB at 8x).
Using this BD writer, so far I have written 7 BD-R(DL) disks at the max 8x and 4 BD-R disks at the max 12x speed without any problems, even though BD-R(SL/DL) Verbatim media is only rated for 6x speed. I also confirmed the 16x write speed to DVD+R media.
Currently Verbatim 25GB BD-R discs cost about $2/disc (getting close to the price per GB of DVD discs!) and 50GB discs are about $7/disc. Prices will continue to fall.
===============
Summary of hardware:
-- this Blu-Ray Writer (Burner) is among the fastest available at this time
-- USB 3.0 currently distinguishes this product from its competition
-- writes DVDs and CDs like other BD writers
-- ASUS is an excellent leading-edge brand
-- Software [Windows-only]:
----- free Cyberlink Media Suite, which contains minimal-feature versions of these programs (until you upgrade to paid versions):
Cyberlink Power2Go 7
Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 with Magic Cinema
Cyberlink PowerBackup 2.5
Cyberlink InstantBurn 5
-- I discovered a hard-to-see On/Off switch (doesn't exist for DVD writers) on the back when it didn't appear to work :-)
-- Color: Black
-- Length: 9.5"
-- Width: 6.5"
-- Height: 2.4"
-- Weight: 2.5 lbs.
==========
Software notes:
-- This hardware is great. But the included Power2Go software has some problems -- 1 fatal error (reported below) and 2 other serious bugs were found on day 1 of use. I recommend the really free ImgBurn software (no annoying paid-upgrade notices) which is a pleasure to use, is continuously being improved (unlike Power2Go, which is at end-of-life), and has an active and easily used forum site. Plus it works on Ubuntu linux.
-- None of the 4 programs I tried (Power2Go, ImgBurn, Blu-ray Creator, Windows cut-and-paste) were able to successfully backup all files from my in-use C: drive without fatal errors and early exit. Even when files in use are set to be ignored by ImgBurn, it and the other programs still fail on files with no eof (Kaspersky and Windows has such files). That is because these low-end programs do not use the Windows-builtin feature of a Volume Shadow Copy (which Paragon uses when copying partitions) which would solve in-use, file-locking and file-eof issues neatly. One way to accomplish backing up all C: files is to first copy the C: partition to a new partition (eg. using not-free Paragon Hard Disk Manager or similar program) and then to backup the new not-in-use partition files using a program such as ImgBurn.
-- Install "Cyberlink Media Suite" from the included disk by clicking on the picture with the burning CD (hover over it to see "Power2Go 7"). At this time (9/24/11) there is no firmware update, so the bottom icon does not currently lead to an available download.
-- If it bothers you, turn off the always-on-top InstantBurn software:
---- on Windows 7 accomplish this by:
------ goto Control Panel->System->Administrative Tools->System Configuration
------ or navigate to [...]
-------- click Startup tab
-------- uncheck InstantBurn
-------- click Apply, then OK
-- To exit InstantBurn, either reboot (after disabling it from auto-start as described above) or Rclick on InstantBurn in the System Tray and click Exit.
-- The included software has only minimal features and has some problems that may make it unusable for your purposes. You have to pay to upgrade any of the 4 component programs to get all features.
-- Power2Go 7 fatal internal software bug found and reported to Cyberlink: Power2Go 7 code ignores upper-lower case filename distinctions and then crashes when it finds so-called "duplicate" files (eg. abc.txt and ABC.txt). When this happens the error message contains no clues as to which files caused it to crash. Luckily the crash occurs during the preparation phase before writing any data to disc. Same bug occurs for InstantBurn.
I also tried Blu-ray Creator (trial version) and it fails with a fatal error for the same folders (copy of old C: partition which is not in active use) that Power2Go fails on, but only after burning half the disc, which I suppose is worse.
[[
-- More details of bug:
A fatal internal bug in Power2Go 7 software caused me to waste many hours getting to the root cause (which entailed binary search on the 45GB large set of files to copy). This was on day 1 of using Power2Go to attempt to copy some data to discs. On my Windows 7 system I have some files backed up from my old WinXP system, including a "<username>\Recent" folder (WinXP auto-generates -- user has no control over it) that in my case always causes a Power2Go 7 internal fatal error. This folder has a file called "Desktop.ini". It also has a shortcut called "desktop.ini". Power2Go code ignores upper-lower case filename distinctions and then crashes when it finds a "duplicate". This is the completely uninformative error message: "File(PrepareBurningDialog.cpp), Build data tree error. Error Code :#0xEB10048". Once I found and deleted the files with the "same" names, Power2Go had no problem copying the data to disc.
]]
===================
More hardware details follow:
(Technical specs provided by Asus on the product box and on other web sites)
Asus BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G/AS External 12x Blu-Ray Burner [2x - 12x depending on BlurayDisc (BD) type]
The Asus BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G/AS External 12x Blu-Ray Burner offers extreme 12x Blu-ray writing speed with USB 3.0. The stylish appearance and functionality of the Asus BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G/AS External 12x Blu-Ray Burner provides consumers with an ideal choice for both business and entertainment. The Asus BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G/AS External 12x Blu-Ray Burner supports the latest Blu-ray 3D technology for life-like movie experiences with Cyberlink PowerDVD 10. This unique space-saving design can be placed either horizontally [without a stand] or vertically with a detachable stand.
Specifications
Asus External USB 3.0 12x Blu-Ray Burner
Type: Blu-Ray Burners
Cache Size: 4 MB
BD-R Write Speed: 12X
BD-R(DL) Write Speed: 8X
BD-R(LTH) Write Speed: 6X
BD-RE(SL/DL) Write Speed: 2x
BD-R(SL/DL) Read Speed: 8X
BD-R(LTH) Read Speed: 6X
BD-RE Read Speed: 8x
BD-RE(DL) Read Speed: 6x
BD-ROM(SL/DL) Read Speed: 8x
DVD+R Write Speed: 16X
DVD-R Write Speed: 16X
DVD+R(DL) Write Speed: 8X
DVD-R(DL) Write Speed: 8X
DVD+RW Rewrite Speed: 8X
DVD-RW Rewrite Speed: 6X
DVD-RAM Write Speed: 5X
DVD+R Read Speed: 16X
DVD-R Read Speed: 16X
DVD+R(DL) Read Speed: 12X
DVD-R(DL) Read Speed: 12X
DVD+RW Read Speed: 12X
DVD-RW Read Speed: 12X
DVD-ROM Read Speed: 16X
DVD-ROM(DL) Read Speed: 12X
DVD-RAM Read Speed: 5X
CD-R Write Speed: 40X
CD-RW Rewrite Speed: 24X
CD-R Read Speed: 40X
CD-RW Read Speed: 24X
DVD video playback: 5X
VCD playback: 9.3X
Audio CD playback: 9.3X
DVD Access Time: 170 ms
CD Access Time: 150 ms
Color: Black
Length: 9.5"
Width: 6.5"
Height: 2.4"
Weight: 2.5 lbs.
Load Type: Tray
Interface Type:
USB 3.0 [compatible with USB 2.0]
Enclosure Type: External
Detailed Features
Additional Specifications
OS Support:
Windows 7
Windows Vista
Windows XP
System Requirements:
Processor: Pentium� D 945(3.4GHz) or higher
Memory:1GB or more is recommended
Graphics Card: NVIDIA� GeForce 7600 GT or ATI X1600 series or above
Use HDCP Compatible display and VGA card to High Definition digital output
Software:
Cyberlink Power2Go 7
Cyberlink PowerDVD 10 with Magic Cinema
Cyberlink PowerBackup 2.5
Cyberlink InstantBurn 5
Features
Eye-popping Blu-ray 3D Visual Excitement: Supports the latest Blu-ray 3D technology for life-like movie experiences with Cyberlink PowerDVD 10. Features technology to give depth to 2D video with real-time 2D-to-3D conversion with a single click of a button.
Refresh Your Listening Experience: Experience crisp audio with lossless pass-through for Dolby Digital EX and DTS-HD (5.1 channels).
Diamond-shaped Design and Flexible Dual Positioning: This unique space-saving design can be placed either horizontally [without a stand] or vertically with a detachable stand.
Experience Blu-ray Entertainment So True to Life: Asus provides HD-like visuals via an innovative suite of advanced video enhancement technologies that deliver unsurpassed quality in DVD movies easily and flexibly.
More Reviews...
ASUS External 12X Blu-Ray Burner with USB 3.0 BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G, Black:: Technical Details
- Diamond-Shaped Design realize aesthetics of technology
- Item Dimensions: 14 x 6 x 9 inches; 4 pounds
- Brand: Asus
- Model: BW-12D1S-U/BLK/G
- Product Type: Personal Computers
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