CD Freaks has posted a review of the BenQ's new dual format DVD recorder, the DW822A. In addition to writing DVD+R media at 8x and DVD+RW media at 4x (DVD-R/-RW media is limited to 4x/2x respectively), BenQ has announced that a firmware update will be made available in the fall that will add dual layer writing support to the drive. So how does the drive stack up? Here's a snippet from the review:

We can�t get around the fact that it�s the first drive on the market that is advertised as dual layer capable (although a firmware upgrade is required), and many people will probably buy it just because of that. It does also offer 8x DVD+R writing speed and is pretty fast at writing at 8x too. Couple this with BenQ�s Walking OPC technology and the result is that it creates very good quality discs with almost all types of DVD-R and DVD+R media. The walking OPC technology does also help when writing CD-R discs, as the quality of the created CD-R discs was also outstanding. It�s also worth mentioning that the drive supports bitsetting, and it has a nice 8Mb buffer. And when it comes to reading discs it�s in its own class, few other drives are able to combine the high reading speeds and low seek times that this drive has.

The fact that it doesn�t support 8x DVD-R and 4x DVD-RW also puts it behind many other competitors. Due to the Walking OPC, it�s pretty slow at 4x DVD-R writing too, using almost 2 minutes more on a disc compared to the fastest writers. Now it�s time to look at the real problems with this drive; first of all it writes 2x DVD-RW discs at 2.4x, making them unreadable in most drives. It�s not the best choice for backing up protected music and game discs either.