I bought this Writer around 6 months ago for £30 through a close friend of mine. Earlier i had a Creative Infra 52X CD ROM ( i can't recall the model ) which was quite comfortable as it had a remote & its reading quality was very good, But it was EXTREMELY sensitive to slightly scratched CD's. I also needed a writer that could read scratched CD's as well & ....TARA RARA.........I came across the LG GCE 8520B CD/RW. Till date i haven't had any problem at all with the job this baby has done for me.
***READ QUALITY & SPEED. [5/5]***
My creative earlier used to take about 12 Mins to read a 700MB CD on an average. Where as the LG GCE 8520B takes around 4 Mins to read a 700MB CD with full data. And what more this can read most of the scratched CD's i have used till date [ Almost 90% ]. That solves my problem. And the read quality ----- its EXCELLENT. I did rip some of my audio CD's using the LG GCE 8520B & the tracks have much much better sound quality than what i have experienced with other Drives with my friends. That is reason enough to award full marks to its Reading ability.
***WRITE, RE-WRITE QUALITY & SPEED. [5/5]***
I have written around 43 or 45 CD's so far with this machine & on an average the writing speed for a fully loaded 700MB CD at 52X speed has been around 2.5 to 3 mins sometimes extending upto 4 mins max. That also with PREMIUM QUALITY. The rewriting speed is a bit low at 24X, it is here that i had experienced a problem once Just once - I had given the command to commence the Rewriting process & for about a minute there was no response from the drive & then after about a minute or so it started Rewriting. You can trust the LG GCE 8520B to write your CD's at optimum quality.
***NORMAL FUNCTIONING. [4/5]***
Well it has been a smooth ride with this baby until now. The sound that the player usually creates during working processes is a very low & gentle Hisssss... But it is a little louder during writing or reading at 52X speed. The CD tray or the COFFEE CUP HOLDER as i call it functions elegently with a bare minimum noise and its silky smooth & no Shaking can be noticed. Just as i told you before ' A Smooth Ride ' .
***FEATURES***
Well it does exactly what its built for and not a move more than that, but here are the manufacturer supplied specifications:-
Product Description LG GCE 8520B - disk drive - CD-RW - IDE Device Type Disk drive - CD-RW Dimensions (WxDxH) 14.6 cm x 18.5 cm x 4.1 cm Weight 0.9 kg Optical Storage 1 x CD-RW - 5.25" x 1/2H - internal Read Speed 52x Write Speed 52x CD / DVD Rewrite Speed 24x Interface Type IDE Buffer Size 2 MB Buffer Underrun Protection Super Link
Thats pretty neat for a CD/RW at this rate.
***AESTHETIC APPEAL. [1/5]***
This is the field where the LG GCE 8520B fails miserably. It looks very bland and unimpressive. Its not the kind that makes you play with its CD tray or make you kiss it when no one's looking. If i was LG GCE 8520B then i would surely go for a lot of makeup & of course a fashionable re-dress.
***BUILD QUALITY. [5/5]***
This one is as rigid as a rock. That doesn't mean i tried to break it & it didn't. But the way i felt when i first touched it was that of a soldier holding his GUN. Its that impressive.
***MY OPINION. [5/5]***
I FEEL GREAT ! to have bought this baby. Surely at £30 ( thats a throw away price) for this machine, its worth using its services. Its worth the satisfaction. And worth the weight on your pocket.
(PS: Please don't forget 2 rate this review.)
Your's technically, jedi_kickass.
More details
Memory / capacity
Good
Design
Satisfactory
Ease of use
Very easy
Instruction manual
Very useful
Manufacturer Support
Good
Speed
Very fast
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