Maxell CD-R 700 MB 16x > Reviews (1)

So it was my wedding anniversary last weekend and my friend - who always remembers my anniversary but I never remember hers - bought me some Maxell CD-Rs. So, as is the Ciao protocol, I thought I'd tell you about them.

WHAT DOES THE PRODUCT BLURB SAY?
"For over 30 years Maxell name has been synonymous with leadership in storage technology. Maxell has earned this reputation not only through continuous development of state-of-the-art products, but also through an obsessive dedication to quality, customer responsiveness and value. Maxell's CD-R disks employ a high-sensitivity recording layer, ensuring compatibility with any CD-R recorder. A revolutionary protective coating makes Maxell CD-R extremely durable for years of music enjoyment."

WHAT CAN YOU PUT ON IT?
CD-Rs are the "once-only" discs and therefore it's probably not a good idea to put anything "non-permanent" on there, like pictures or documents, but is best for music. In fact, their product blurb only mentions music and not data. Note: if you want to keep adding and deleting data on CD format, go with the other type: the CD-RW.

It can hold 80 mins worth of music (usually around 25 three and a half minute songs). Or hundreds of pictures and literally thousands of documents. Generally anything you'd fit on the old 1.44MB floppy discs times about 600!

PERFORMANCE
Going back to their blurb the familiar old phrase "high quality recording" is evident. Maxell, along with TDK - and others - have been using this phrase since time immemorial to push blank tapes, videos and DATs. They also quote the use of this "revolutionary" recording coating but they don't go into any details on the packaging about the make up of this special sheen.

With the "high quality" angle so evident in media storage products these days, I feel that the Maxell take on things, may be justified. I wanted an old school hip hop compilation album so I ripped a few tracks from Public Enemy, Big Daddy Kane and EPMD. Once burned, I played the music and it sounded superb.

DOES IT LIKE MY BURNERS?
Yes. I use ANVSoft's ANVBurner and a freebie from the net, Burn4Free and neither of these appear to hinder the quality or progress of the CD-R. I have used about five of the fifty CDs so far and only one did a track not copy correctly but that was due to me running a couple of applications oiin the background whilst burning, and was therefore nothing to do with the product.

PRICE
Although it was a present, I have seen these for as little as £18.00 in Wilkinsons to around £25-30 in PC World. I think this represents superb valuie for money, especially if you're not fussed about jewel cases or inlay cards.

BAD POINTS
I'm a bit of a CDR perfectionist and would really have liked some jewel cases with this product to protection the discs from dirt and dust. However, 50 CDRs equates to space for around 1000 tracks so I'm can't complain!

OVERALL
A definite thumbs-up. The spindle option for CDRs isn't my preferred route but these are fine. So far, with the exception of me running too many programs in the background, they have proved to be durable, reliable, easy to use and producers of satisfactory sound quality.

Thanks for reading.

Wayne