CDRLabs.com has posted a review of the Samsung TS-H552U 16x DVD±RW recordable DVD drive. The first available drive to support 6x writing on DVD+RL DL media, it also supports 16x writing to DVD+R/-R media, 4x writing to DVD+RW/-RW media, 40x writing to CD-R and 32x writing to CD-RW. But are these fast speeds enough to make it the burner to buy? Here's a snippet from the review:

Samsung's new drive was the fastest when writing to DVD+R and -R media at 16x. It turned in a very impressive time, beating the former champ, the NEC ND-3520A, by almost 11 seconds on the -R test. However, the drive really suffers from it's 4x rating when writing to DVD+RW and -RW media. While newer drives from Sony, NEC and Plextor burn DVD+RW at 8x, Samsung's new drive slugged along at 4x, finishing a very distant last.

With CD Speed, the TS-H552U's writing quality varied a lot from one manufacturer to another. While we got pretty good results with most of the DVD+R media we tested, the drive did not fair nearly as well with DVD-R media. The PI/PIF rates on were much higher than we'd like to see and most of the discs had their share of PO failures. However, the TS-H552U still isn't ready for "primetime" when it comes to writing on DVD-R media.

When it comes down to it, the performance of Samsung's H552U has one troubling aspect: DVD writing quality. While the TS-H552U turned in some very good times when writing to DVD±R, DVD±RW and DVD+R DL media, its writing quality could have been a lot better, especially with DVD-R and DVD +R DL media.