CDRLabs.com has posted their review of Sony's new 8x dual format DVD recorder, the DRU-530A. Here's a snippet from their review:

So is the DRU-530A the best DVD�RW drive currently available? Yes and no. While the DRU-530A is a huge improvement over Sony's previous DVD�RW drives, there were a few things that kept it from getting top marks in our review.

Like the latest generation of DVD writers, the DRU-530A features 8x DVD+R writing speeds. Unfortunately, it wasn't as fast as some of the other drives we've reviewed. In our tests, Sony's new DVD writer trailed the drives from Nu Tech and Plextor by almost two minutes. The DRU-530A also lacks the ability to write to 4x DVD+R media at 8x. According to Sony, doing this could result in poor burning and playback performance. However, this is something that many people will probably miss, as 8x DVD+R media is currently hard to find, not to mention expensive.

Otherwise, the DRU-530A did very well in our DVD writing tests. When writing to DVD+R and DVD-R media at 4x, it was as much as a minute faster than its predecessor, the DRU-510A. The DRU-530A also turned in some of the fastest times we've seen when rewriting to DVD+RW and DVD-RW media. Reading DVD's wasn't a problem for Sony's new DVD writer either. The DRU-530A was able to read single layer DVD-ROM's at speeds near 12x and had some very good seek times. It also reached a maximum transfer speed of 8.5x with dual layer and recordable media. While this doesn't sound fast, it's better than what most drives can do.