Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. Review: Ricoh MP7200A-DP
The snappily titled MP7200A-DP is the latest CD-RW drive from Ricoh. Boasting an extraordinary 20X speed when burning CD-R disks and 10X for CD-RW, it is right on the leading edge of the current CD burning technology. Does its real world performance match the paper figures?
| Product | MP7200A-DP |
|---|---|
| Company | Ricoh |
| Web | www.ricoh.co.uk |
| Price | £199 |
| We like | As quick as it gets and reliable too |
| We don't like | |
| Rating | 9/10 |
| Requirements |
The drive comes complete with a CD-R and CD-RW disk to get you started, an audio cable, fixing screws, manuals and software. In this instance, Ricoh have supplied the highly regarded Nero Burning ROM version 5. The drive is IDE based so needs to be set to master or slave prior to installation depending on your PCs current configurations. The manual is on the CD which may be a catch 22 if this is your first and only CD drive but in most cases people will already have a working drive to read the documentation from prior to installation. The MP7200A-DP has a 2Mb buffer and Ricoh recommend a PC with at least a Pentium II 300 with 64Mb of RAM to partner the drive.
In Use
Once installed, it was time to give the drive a whirl. The 40X read speed is excellent for a CD-RW drive and the software was soon installed and ready to go. Nero is an excellent package but not quite as user friendly for beginners as some. However, it does give you far more control over the burning process and once you're familiar with it, you'll really start to appreciate what it can do.
The drive features JustLink technology which is much like the better known BurnProof in that it prevents buffer under-runs. Buffer under-runs occur when for whatever reason, the PC fails to provide the data fast enough to the CD burner. As the CD burning process must have a constant stream of data, if it stops, even for a moment, the result is a so called 'coaster' as that is all the CD-R disk will now be good for. JustLink cleverly avoids this by temporarily suspending the burn process until the PC has caught up again but in such a way as to allow the burn to continue without it looking like anything has happened when the disk is read back.
The drive also features JustSpeed which optimises the speed to match the disc currently loaded. Different brands and types of CD-R media have different maximum speeds at which they will reliably write and JustSpeed changes the speed between 12 and 20X to match this. As 20X disks are hard to come by right now, this helps make best use of your existing blanks until faster supplies are more abundant.
When tested, the drive proved very quick at burning. It can be quite uncanny to see a whole disk burn in a couple of minutes. The resulting CD-Rs played back quite happily on a variety of drives so compatibility seems fine too. The JustLink feature works well and even when the host PC was being stressed by running various disk intensive applications, it continued to burn good disks.
The MP7200A-DPs other claim to fame is linked to the high read speed. Ricoh claim the disk can perform Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) at up to 40X. This is important if you rip a lot of CDs to MP3 or WAV format files for making music compilations. Some drives have trouble reliably reading at even 2 or 4 speed so 40 is impressive to say the least. My tests showed that in reality individual CDs had a bearing on the ability for the drive to read them at high speed and none came near the full 40X but overall this is the quickest drive I have seen so far for DAE.
Conclusion
This is a great drive. The high performance is impressive and when combined with the JustSpeed and JustLink facilities ought to make it impossible to produce a duff CD. It's worth shopping around for the best price though as it can be had for less that £160 - truly a bargain for this level of performance.
