So the war is over, Blu-ray has won, even though it really wasn’t much of a war, more of an argument than anything. So now all of our hi-def videos will be on the Blu-ray format, and if we wish to watch it on our PCs we’ll need to buy some hardware. Prices have been falling quite a bit on Blu-ray drives, below $100 which is nice, but I highly doubt that they’ll ever fall to the prices we see today for DVD drives due to Blu-ray licensing fees. Sure eventually they’ll fall in price but not until a new format is released most likely, the greed of the Blu-ray consortium companies will keep the prices high and force us to pay up for the privilege of watching Br movies on our computers. That’s capitalism, and it makes the world go round, so we’ve just got to deal with it I guess…

Today for review I’ve got a product from our friends at Liteon, it’s their Blu-ray internal reader optical drive, it’s actually a combo drive which makes it a bit more valuable since it can also burn DVDs and CDs with no need for a separate drive for those tasks. The Liteon iHES206 Internal 6x Blu-Ray drive is fast and quiet, two things that are very positive aspects for an optical drive, at least the two most important things to me. It’s also capable of burning with Lightscribe as well so you can label your discs. I’ve put it up against one of the fastest drives out there today, the Samsung Super Writemaster, continue on to see how it matches up…

Here’s a brief video unboxing of the Liteo Blu-ray drive, not sure why I did an unboxing of it, but hey why not… check out the video and the still pictures and continue on:

Specifications:

Liteon iHES206 Internal 6x Blu-ray Disc Reader and DVD/CD Writer

Features:
*SATA interface, Half-Height internal DVD+R / DVD+R9 / DVD-R9 / DVD+RW / DVD-R / DVD-RW / DVD-RAM /CD-R/ CD-RW / CD-ROM / BD-ROM / BD-R / BD-RE combination drive

*SMART-X(*) function adjusts CD-DA / VCD / DVD data extraction to a fastest allowable speed according to both data request rate from host and disk quality

*Seamless Link  function can avoid buffer under run as well as get the best writing quality by smartly adjusting writing strategy

*ABS system reduce vibration and noise during recording and reading
*Support Over-Burn and Raw mode copy
*BD read compliant: BD data, BD video of 12 cm diameter
*AACS compliant (incl. Rom mark)
*Conform to Orange Book: Part 2 CD-R Volume 1, Part 2 CD-R Volume 2 Multi Speed,Part 3 CD-RW Volume 1 (1x, 2x, and 4x), Part 3 CD-RW Volume2: High Speed, Part 3 CD-RW Volume 3: Ultra Speed. Support Fixed packet, Variable packet, Disc-at-once, Session-at-once and Track-at-once

*CD read compliant: CD-DA,CD-ROM, CD-ROM/XA , Photo-CD, Multi-session, Video-CD, CD-I FMV, CD Extra, CD Plus, CD-R , and CD-RW

>*Support both 8cm and 12cm disc of CD and DVD family
*Support LightScribe direct disk labeling to LightScribe media

The Liteon 6x Blu-ray is an SATA drive as you may have noticed, I think most newer drives these days are, installation was easy, just like any other drive really.

It comes with Cyberlink PowerDVD BD Edition that needed updated as soon as it was installed, no surprise there. PowerDVD BD Edition works fine, I had no problems with it at all, I grabbed Doomsday Unrated Edition on Blu-Ray to watch and it worked perfectly fine. It also comes bundled with some other extraneous stuff like the Blu-ray Disc Suite which I found rather pointless.

The drive is also nice and quiet reading all discs and even writing DVDs, something that I very much like about this drive, there’s nothing more annoying than having a loud optical drive especially when using it to watch a movie.

For testing, since I don’t have another Blu-ray drive for comparison I figured just test it out to check the claims made. I ram Nero DiscSpeed 5benchmark Test and the max speed came out a little over the claimed 6x speed at 6.09x.

Random Access Time for Blu-ray is claimed at 350ms by Liteon, Nero measured it at 248ms which isn’t too bad.

Here’s a screenshot of the test:

Next up I figured I would compare DVD speeds in writing and reading to my Samsung Super Writemaster that I reviewed HERE a while back.

As you can see the creation time was actually quicker on the Liteon drive than on the Samsung, and the Average read speed was as well.

Here’s the results for the Liteon testing:

and here’s for the Samsung drive:

Overall the Liteon drive is very fast and it works very well.

Coming in at around $120 or less, depending where you look, it’s a good value for the money really.

Conclusion:
The Liteon iHES206 is a very capable drive, it’s fast and quiet and competitively priced.

The included software works well and the addition of the extra faceplate will make sure it matches any case style.

I ran into no problems at all with this drive, it has become my main drive now, pushing the Samsung to the number two spot or bay in my case.

Pros:
Fast
Quiet
Includes PowerDVD BD Edition
Includes extra faceplate

Cons:
None really

Grades:
Overall
Design
Performance