CD Freaks has posted a review of NEC's new 8x dual format recordable DVD drive. Here's just a snippet:

This time we will take a look at the latest and greatest DVD-Writer from NEC with the model number ND-2500A. This is our first experience with DVD-Writers from NEC so we are unable to compare it to earlier NEC models. This is the first writer we have seen that supports 8X DVD-R and 4X DVD-RW. But a CD-Writing speed of 32X and a CD-ReWriting speed of 16X is slower than most other writers in the same generation.

The NEC ND-2500A uses Z-CLV(Zone-Constant Linear Velocity). The first zone from 0-0,8Gb is done at 4x speed, the next zone from 0,8Gb to 2,2Gb is done at 6x speed and the last zone from 2,2Gb to 4,4Gb is done at 8x. This gives an average speed of 6.80x. The speed is the same for both DVD-R and DVD+R discs.

We have to admit that it's the first drive to support 8x DVD-R and 4x DVD-RW, this in itself makes the drive stand stronger than most competitors. We did get impressed by the writing quality of this drive, for CD-R discs it's only beaten by the Lite-On LDW-411S that we reviewed a while ago. But for DVD-R and DVD+R discs it simply outclasses all the other drives we have reviewed. If you rip movies to the hard drive you may also be annoyed be the speed lock that limits the speed to 5x CAV for DVD-video disc. And we have to face the fact that other drives like the Plextor PX-708A and Lite-On LDW-811S is faster at 8x DVD writing than this drive in addition to supporting 40x CD-R write speed and 24x CD-RW write speed.