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Teac may be better known for its hi-fi components, but it has been producing PC optical drives for quite some time as well. Unfortunately the optical drives aren’t quite as stylish as Teac’s Champaign gold coloured midi hi-fi components, but they still tend to be of a pretty high quality.

Unlike many of the drives on test, Teac hasn’t tried to shy away from the PC’s beige roots. The fascia, is plain beige and there’s little to break up the blandness apart from a blue Teac logo. There’s a single eject button, a status indicator and a manual eject hole.

Write speeds are four-speed for DVD+/-R, two-speed for DVD-RW, 2.4-speed for DVD+RW, 16-speed for CD-R and 10-speed for CD-RW. It will also read DVDs at 12-speed and CDs at 32-speed.

In use the Teac proved to be a pretty fast performer. Using DVD+RW media it ranked second in every test. However, you should remember that DVD+RW four-speed media was not available at the time of testing and the Teac drive is only rated at 2.4-speed for DVD+RW. This means that all the four-speed rated drives will be faster than the Teac with four-speed media.

In the DVD-R tests the Teac topped the chart and in the two DVD+R tests it managed second and third place. DVD-RW performance was also pretty good and the Teac was top in the format test, second in the mixed files test and third in the large file test.

You won’t be disappointed when you look inside the Teac box either. As well as a comprehensive software bundle you get and IDE cable, an audio cable, mounting screws, a detailed manual, one blank DVD-R disc and one blank CD-R disc.

Software wise, you get four CDs. The most important is the Nero disc which includes Nero 5.5, Nero Express, Nero Vision Express and InCD 4. On top of this you get the obligatory driver disc, a copy of Pinnacle Studio 8SE and InterVideo’s WinDVD, making this a bit of a video creation package.

This really is a very good retail bundle. You get just about everything you’ll need inside the box and the software supplied is first rate. Just having Nero instead of an obscure burning package gains some ground, but if you are thinking of authoring DVD movies you have everything you need here.

The price of £136.29 isn’t bad considering the performance and overall package, but it’s still a fair bit more expensive than the more versatile LG.

The only thing that lets the Teac down is its DVD+RW rating. With many of the other drives on test supporting four-speed DVD+RW writing, the Teac will be left behind when four-speed media becomes common place.

Verdict

Teac has put together a great package with the DV-W50D and you really do get everything in the box. The slower DVD+RW write speed is a disappointment, but if you can live with that this is a very attractive bundle.

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