HP dvd640i review

HP's new LightScribe technology lets you label discs using the laser drives already included to read and write information.

The label side of the special LightScribe discs contains a dye that darkens when it's exposed to laser light. So before or after you burn your data, you can burn a custom label on your DVD.

Creating a label using the SureThing label design software is easy, once you turn off it's default SmartDesign mode. Burning our test labels onto a LightScribe CD-R took about 28 minutes. Your design is rendered in shades of grey - combined with the gold colour of the disc surface, you get a pleasant sepia effect. The LightScribe process does produce noticeable stippling on high-resolution images, so simple line art works better than photos. Either way, the labels look pretty classy.

The dvd640i writes all the main formats including dual layer (DL) DVD+R discs. Its performance is respectable. It took just over 8minutes to burn 4.35GB of test data to a 16xDVD+R, and 25 minutes 20 seconds to write the same data to a 2.4x dual-layer DVD+R. It only writes DVD-R at 8x speed, though. The setup instructions and software are excellent, but unless you're replacing an existing drive, you'll need to buy an IDE cable as well.

You could buy an equivalent DVD writer for £20 less, but it wouldn't have LightScribe. Blank LightScribe discs aren't much more expensive than normal brand-name blanks, and we expect the drives and discs to get cheaper as the technology becomes standard. You only need to buy special LightScribe Media if you specifically want to burn a label on your disc. For normal backups and other humdrum projects, bog-standard writeable CDs and DVDs are fine.

The main downside of LightScribe is the slow 'print' speed (although HP promises a software update). If you want to make batches of discs, look into print-based options. But if you want an easy way to make your home-cooked discs look smarter, this is a winner.