Digital Home Thoughts: LG GSA-4120B: 12x Super Multi DVD EVERYTHING!

The Good
LG is the first manufacturer to release DVD burner that not only burns DVD’s at 12X but can also write to dual layer discs as well as DVD-RAM. Other drives are out there that can perform these tasks individually, but it will save you money and space to have one drive that does it all.

The bezel is white. This is much nicer looking than beige for those who have black/colored cases. Also, it has a neat-o duo-tone silver strip along the bottom edge. This adds a bit of a transition between a black case and the white drive. Two thumbs up to the designers for coming up with something that doesn’t look absolutely terrible in a black case.

The first time I burned a regular CD-R with this burner I thought there was something wrong. I started the burn, wrote something down on a piece of paper and when I looked up I noticed the burn had stopped. I thought it was some kind of error, but it turns out the disc had burned successfully.

DVD writing worked well. I could only find 8X DVD-R and DVD+R discs though. I did have problems getting my DVD-RW disc to write at 4X. Nero seemed to only want burn them at 2X which was a little disappointing. I’m not going to spend too much time nit-picking over the details because in general, the GSA-4120B does what it says it can do, and frankly, the really fast discs aren’t out yet. With so many different formats out there, it’s impossible to find a drive that does them all perfectly. Some formats will likely work better then others.

One final comment about the actual use of the drive; it is very quiet even burning at high speeds.


Figure 1: Front view

The Not Bad
The problem with claiming the ability to burn a DVDs at 12X or to be able to burn dual layer discs is that these types of discs are very hard to find. And if/when you do, it’ll cost you an arm and a leg to buy them. This isn’t really a big deal of course because these types of disc will eventually be common place and prices inevitably fall. When this happens you will be prepared to take advantage of that.

The GSA-4120B is bundled with Nero 6. Nero has always been one of the better pieces of software for CD/DVD burning. I had been using version 5.5 for the last year and have been very pleased with the results. After installing the bundled version (Nero 6), I must say I am very impressed. The interface is much nicer to look at, and it is much easier to navigate to common tasks. Two thumbs up for Nero. Unfortunately the version that ships with the drive does not include all of the DVD plug-ins, so you can’t use it to burn home videos.


Figure 2: Top side view