LG GGW-H20L review

LG's GGW-H20L is the first optical drive we've seen that can play both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs.

It is also the first Blu-ray writer we've seen that can write to 50GB Blu-ray discs. Frustratingly, 50GB discs are virtually impossible to buy and we were unable to acquire any for speed testing. It's also disappointing that 50GB discs currently cost about £20 each, while 25GB discs are even poorer value per gigabyte at around £15.

We had no trouble playing either Blu-ray or HD DVD movies using the included PowerDVD software, making the GGW-H20L attractive for use in a media centre PC, especially one with space for only one optical drive. The ability to play HD DVDs isn't all that compelling now that Blu-ray has won the format war, but it's still reassuring to know that you have the ability to play both formats.

The GGW-H20L was incredibly fast at burning write-once 25GB Blu-ray discs, taking just under 22 minutes - the fastest time we've seen so far for a Blu-ray writer. However, we achieved this speed only by disabling BD defect management in Nero. With this enabled, the burn time jumped to just over 53 minutes. Defect management is similar to the verify data option when writing CD and DVD discs, which tries to ensure that the data written to disc isn't corrupted, and has a similar negative effect on write speeds.

The GGW-H20L was far slower when burning rewriteable Blu-ray discs. Filling a 25GB disc took an hour and a half. Its DVD writing speeds were slow compared with those of dedicated DVD writers, which now claim 20X speeds for single-layer DVDs. The GGW-H20L couldn't match its claimed 16X when writing single-layer discs, managing around 9X. It came close to its claimed 4X for writing two-layer DVDs, though. If you regularly burn DVDs, you may need a dedicated DVD writer.

Although the GGW-H20L is significantly cheaper than the first Blu-ray writers, the cost of blank Blu-ray media hasn't fallen much since they first became available. They still cost around 70p per gigabyte. This is much more expensive than DVDs and hard disks, which cost around 20p per gigabyte. At the moment, Blu-ray discs aren't the best choice for everyday storage.

The GGW-H20L's real appeal is for those who are building or upgrading a media centre PC and want to be able to play both Blu-ray and HD DVD movies. It's cheaper than buying separate Blu-ray and HD DVD drives, although it has a SATA rather than a PATA interface, so make sure your PC has a free SATA connector. You also need a fast dual-core processor and a fast graphics card with an HDMI port to get the most out of HD movies. It may not be perfect, but the GGW-H20L is the first high-definition optical drive we'd recommend, so it deserves its Most Wanted award.

Author: Alan Lu