Conclusion
The AOpen CRW1232A, while a bit long in the tooth compared to 16X and faster burners now hitting store shelves, offers an alluring alternative for those on a tighter budget. Its strengths include:
- Fastest 12X writing performance tested
- Fastest 10X rewriting performance of any drive tested
- Fastest packet-writing performance tested
- Unbeatable price and value
While there's not much to complain about, there are a few weaknesses to note:
- The drive can be quite noisy when reading CDs (especially during seeks)
- Its read performance is not consistently fast when reading various pressed CDs
- It's not as fast as the latest 16X burners
Overall, we are quite impressed with AOpen's submission. It won't wrest the Leaderboard title from Plextor's 16/10/40A, but its bang-for-the-buck performance makes it a solid runner-up and earns it a StorageReview.com "Safe Buy".
