Check it out here: http://www.cdfreaks.com/article/135

I know it's late, but after all I did not get the drive before mid January.

Before whining that I may have over-rated the drive: READ the review, and especially the conclusion. And keep in mind:

-What other dual format drives officially supports bitsetting?
-What other dual format drives have the same game backup capabilities?
-What other dual format drives have the same performance with audio discs and protected audio discs?

Other drives may be better in some categories like DVD-Writing quality, but then again they may be weaker in the above mentioned areas. So I think the drive really deserves the "Best value award".

New in this review:

-LTR-52327S used for the C1/C2 scanning.
-Minor fixes and changes
-added ReWritable disc quality tests.
-More DVD-Media compatibility information and tests.

As always: comments welcomed

As always, excellent and thorough work.

I wonder if it's really best to use the 411S for quality scans. I think I can see positive and negative things about doing that.

Negative:
Most people who buy an 811 will be using the 811 for reading and scanning, and will be comparing scans on the 811 with your scans. They will, of course, also be wondering why their own scans look worse than yours do in many cases. Also, using the reviewed drive for scanning gives us an indicator of how well it reads in general.

Positive:
Since other brand drives that are reviewed will not report PI/PO, they must be checked with a LiteOn burner. Using the same 411S for scanning ALL tests will provide a consistant basis for comparison of one drive against another.

Food for thought.

There is no big difference for scanning DVD-R. but the 811S seems to give sky-high amount of errors on DVD+R when scanning at 4x...... for now I'll stick to the 411S so every reviewed drive can be compared to each other

Only when scanning discs that it has burned itself. Not when scanning discs from other burners.

Wrong. It have the same problem with pioneer 107D written ricohjpnr01 discs.

Not here, not with NEC and 106D burned Ricoh. Perhaps the issue is peculiar to 8x burned Ricoh R-01? I've burned a few dozen at 6x on the NEC, and the scans are extremely consistant reading at 4x. I've yet to see one bad scan on any Ricoh burned in those 2 drives.
I guess I was wondering whether avoiding this issue is necessarily the best way to go for a review, since it seems to be a common issue. The LiteOn burners do seem to have issues with reading some poorly burned discs, maybe not just Ricoh.

Good review!
I have been amazed from the bad burning performances some CD, as Taiyo Yuden. I don't understand.
OC-Freak, is possible that it had some problem the 811S that you have used in the tests?

I posted my comments in the reactions after the review/ conclusions.

The TY problem is verified on 2 other drives - but a third drive did not have problems, so but problem on 3 out of 4 shows that there is problems.

Also tried 3 different brands of TY discs (Which all works great in most other writers): Sony, Verbatim and Plextor.

Ok, is really a 811S problem.
I cannot make the test because I don't have CD made in Taiyo Yuden.
Have you communicated this problem to the LiteON for the next firmware?
If you want I can do it.
Hi.

OC's sig:
Yeah but it's an old picture, you were much younger and better looking then.

Excellent review as always. Keep up the good work (and the jabbing at LiteOn for some improved firmware)

Good read, any chance on a 451S or 851S review?

Nope.

The next Lite-On review will most likely be a SOHW-812S.

Can anyone explain to me what the best LiteOn drive would be to buy? I cam confused with all the model numbers and the exact differences between them all - SOHW - 812S? LDW - 851S? LDW - 811S?

I would mainly use the drive to backup my ps2 games, and my DVD collection.

And help/advice would be appreciated.
Thanks in advance

Definitely 812S.

Why 851S is better than 811S: 851S has a newer pick-up-head unit and thus has better seek times... the impression I get in the forum is also that the 851S is less problematic than the 811S

Why the 812S is better than the 851S: 812S is newer than the 851S (which, in turn, is newer than the 811S). Impression from forum is that 812S is less problematic than 851S. Also, 812S support -R burning at 8x.

can this lite-on 811s support Mount Rainer as CNET asia mention.

http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/hardwar...18382p,00.htm?

I think we can expect an 812S review sonner rather then later.