CDRLabs.com has posted a review of LG's new recordable DVD drive, the GSA-4120B. The GSA-4120B is not only capable of 12x DVD+R, 8x DVD-R, 2.4 DVD+R DL and 4x DVD±RW writing speeds, it's the first drive with the ability to read and write DVD-RAM media at 5x. Is this the perfect optical drive? Here's a snippet from the review:

It shouldn't be too surprising that what the GSA-4120B does best is write DVD's. Thanks to its 12x DVD+R writing speed, the drive was able to write 4GB of data in less than seven minutes. This wasn't enough to top Plextor's new 12x DVD±RW. However, it was a big improvement over LG's earlier "Super-Multi" drives. The GSA-4120B also performed pretty well with other types of recordable DVD media. It turned in one of the fastest DVD-R writing times we've seen and had no problems holding its own with DVD+RW and DVD-RW media. In addition, the GSA-4120B performed as expected when writing to DVD+R DL media, but without the ability to set the book type, compatibility might be an issue with some DVD players.

Of course, speed isn't everything. With a drive like the GSA-4120B, things like writing quality and media compatibility are just as important. While LG's new drive cannot write to 4x DVD±R media at 8x, it does have the ability to write to select 8x DVD+R media at 12x. Unfortunately, finding compatible media still wasn't easy. Out of all of our test media, only a few types worked at this speed. On the other hand, the GSA-4120B's writing quality was, for the most part, very good. With the exception of RiDATA's 8x DVD+R media, the number of PI/PIF errors stayed well within acceptable limits, even when written at 12x.