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When we wrote our first DVD writer group test, the LG GSA-4040B walked away with the Editor’s Choice award. That drive combined ultimate format flexibility with a great price and even though it wasn’t the fastest drive on test, it’s broad range of talents could not be ignored.

Now LG has launched the GSA-4082B with the same all-format flexibility and beefed up write speeds. This is the only drive on test that will write to every DVD format including DVD-RAM. Now for the majority of people DVD-RAM isn’t considered a necessity, but it is a useful format for anyone that wants to use an optical disc as random access removable media.

The GSA-4082B will write DVD-/+R at eight-speed, DVD-/+RW at four-speed, DVD-RAM at three-speed, CD-R at 24-speed and CD-RW at 16-speed. Although the DVD writing specs are up there with the fastest drives around, the CD writing specs are a little below par by today’s standards.

This retail box includes, most importantly, an IDE cable to get you connected up to your PC straight away. You also get an audio cable, mounting screws and a blank three-speed DVD-RAM disc. The only letdown is the burning software – B’s Recorder Gold is just no match for Nero.

The times turned in for burning DVD-R media are very respectable, and faster than all the other drives on test. I have to say that this surprised me, but it’s always better to be pleasantly surprised rather than disappointed. With DVD-RW the times are pretty average, and the 4.3GB MPEG-2 file test sees the LG at the bottom of the table.

With DVD+R media the LG was a little behind the other drives, but not so much that you’d notice it in real world use. DVD+RW writing was again, pretty average, but the disc format was particularly slow at almost 20 minutes.

The LG’s low CD writing specs showed through in the testing with it landing at the bottom of all the tables apart from the CD-RW format.

I also copied 4GB of data to a DVD-RAM disc which took 37 minutes 2 seconds, and copying it back from the DVD-RAM disc took 17 minutes 28 seconds. Now obviously 37 minutes is a long time, but you need to put this into context. DVD-RAM is primarily a random access removable storage media. This means that you’re likely to use it to drag and drop files as necessary, rather than copying large chunks of data, and for this it’s a great format.

So it has to be said, that the LG isn’t the greatest performer here, unless you’re using a lot of DVD-R media of course. But, it is the most fully featured drive on test, with none of the other units supporting DVD-RAM. Now you’d expect this ultimate functionality to come at a price, but it doesn’t. You can pick up the LG GSA-4082B for as little as £76.01 including VAT, making it a bit of a steal.

Verdict

Yet again LG has stolen the show with its Super Multi Format drive. Performance is average in most cases, but the versatility is unrivalled and the price just incredible.

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