MSI XA52P SATA Internal CD-RW/DVD-ROM Burner Review

CD based writers and combo drives are without a doubt running short in their shelf life. This is due to the same set of functions that can be carried out by DVD writers and the pricing of these writers are in a steady decline. But for those who have yet to find a need for the larger storage space offered by DVDs, CDs are still an ideal form of mass and highly affordable storage medium.

Our tests showed the MSI XA52P as a rather speedy drive and while it did not achieve the nominal 52x read speed even with its speed boost was activated, it was still fast enough to complete most standard tasks. At the same time, Nero CD/DVD Speed reported the drive to be a fast seeker for both CDs and DVDs and it’s to be noted that the drive consumed just a small fraction of CPU resource as it went through our suite of tests.

MSI’s ActivePanel is a nice touch as usual. Having the ability to change the appearance of the faceplate as how one would with a mobile phone ensures monotony will always be kept at bay and more importantly be able to match the design of your system. As a combo drive, the XA52P was a very good performer and did not grumble too much with the various media used in our write tests. However, in light of the declining prices of DVD writers, the S$98 pricetag of the MSI drive might not be in the best price bracket to justify a purchase – the cheapest 8×8x DVD writer we found costs just $20 more. That said, we still want to applaud MSI for being the first to incorporate the new SATA interface. Newer motherboards these days tend to offer more SATA ports than IDE connectors and a crucial area of concern are platforms like the Intel 915P and 925X series. These new chipsets are going the way of SATA and offer only one legacy IDE port, so it is about time someone came out with a SATA based optical drive. If you plan to adopt as many storage related devices as you can that utilize the SATA interface, then the MSI XA52P is probably a very worthwhile consideration.

Hardware Zone 4 Star Award

MSI XA52P SATA Internal Combo @ HardwareZone