Pioneer recently released two new DVD-burners: the DVR-112 and DVR-112D. The first one also writes and reads DVD-RAM discs. Both devices are extremely fast and burn DVDs with up to 18x speed, if the media will allow it. I tested them both with Verbatim 16x DVD-R, DVD-R, Verbatim DVD-RAM 5x, and Dual and Double Layer DVDs.

First thing that struck me with the DVR-112 was that it actually reads DVD-RAM discs faster than the only other drive I’ve ever tested DVD-RAM with: the Sony DRX-820UL. The latter takes several minutes before even recognizing there is a DVD-RAM disc in the drive. The Pioneer DVR-112 immediately recognizes the disc and mounts it or hands it off to the OS for Initialisation with Disk Utility.

I was very curious to know whether the writing speed matched this great performance, and I wasn’t disappointed. Indeed, the Pioneer DVR-112 is capable of higher speed DVD-RAM than the 5x media available in Europe. The Pioneer is capable of reading and writing the 12x DVD-RAM media that is available in other parts of the world.

Despite this inability to test the DVD-RAM capabilities at their fullest, it wasn’t hard to see that DVD-RAM can be quite comfortable writing to. The DVR-112 doesn’t take much time to fill up an empty DVD-RAM, even at 5x speed only. Half a Gigabytes takes approx. 4 minutes to copy. With the Sony, it took well over 10 minutes, which made the whole process useless for any production environment.

Fast and Coaster-Risk Free DVD-Writer

Enough said about the DVR-112 and its DVD-RAM capabilities. Let’s take a look at the “ordinary” performance of the DVR-112 and DVR-112D. The DVR-112 multi-format drive writes at 18X speed on DVD-R and +R, 10X on DVD-R DL and +R DL, 6X on DVD-RW and 8X on +RW. Its write speed for DVD-RAM media is an industry-leading 12X, whilst CD-R and CD-RW media are catered for at 40X and 32X speeds respectively.

The good news about these two devices is that they can achieve 18x writing speed, at least when the media being used is good and the software sustains the speed. With Toast Titanium 8.0.1, I got an average writing speed of 16x with bursts every tens seconds or so that went well into the 18x performance with the Verbatim media.

A Dual Layer DVD that certifies for 4x burning, was filled up at 7x speed, taking 14 minutes to fill up entirely. As with previous models, the Pioneer DVR-112 and DVR-112D do accelerate and slow down when the media requires it.

However, the best news is that I’ve now been using both Pioneers for over a week in a daily test requiring 4 DVDs to be burnt, without ever having had a coaster. I can even type, get my e-mail and surf the web simultaneously, without receiving an alert from Toast that the DVD is going to be a failure. With the Sony and the Philips-mechanism LaCie I have still at my disposal, this is simply not possible.

Of course, this exemplary behaviour is also partly due to the use of Toast Titanium 8 and Verbatim media. Nevertheless, the DVR-112 product range once again proves that Pioneer is currently delivering what can only be called the best and most consistent quality of all DVD-burner manufacturers.

There is one thing that remains disappointing about Pioneer’s burners. Due to their working relationship with Apple they cannot or will not release Mac OS X compatible firmware updaters. For Power Mac users, the only solution if you want to update the firmware nevertheless, is to find a PC. Virtual PC doesn’t work, I can tell, as I tried it out myself.

If you’re interested in how I tested these devices, read this as well: I built each DVR-112 model in into an existing LaCie d2 casing that I have kept for the purpose. The connection to the Mac is by FireWire. I have also tried using these burners as built-in “Superdrives” but without (of course) over-writing the firmware with Apple’s.