Introduction

Hardware Fusion reviews the Asus CDW-5224A. CD Writers are now more frequently than ever being purchased and used in home user systems. With the falling costs of DVD writers manufacturers have been forced to lower CD writer costs dramatically. What was once £120 is now around the £60 – 70 area. DVD writers will of course take over the CD writer market but at the moment the prices are still a little too high for comfort. This is particularly the case with DVD-R’s and DVD-RW media which can cost up to £15 per disk, compared to a CD-RW which can cost as little as £1.50 per disk. Analysts have predicted that the DVD-R market will start to take off once DVD media has fallen in price, therefore making it cheaper to backup your files or for creating your own DVD movies. But for the time being there hasn’t been more of a better time than now to consider buying a CD-W. For example, with the Asus CDW-5224A you can get a 52X write, 24X re-write and a 52X read device for just £51.00 Inc VAT. Over the past year or so CD-W manufacturers have dramatically increased the performance of CD writer devices. Asus are one of many manufactures to introduce new technology into the CD writer market with their unique FlextraSpeed and FlextraLink technologies. Other manufacturers have, of course implemented their own unique features into their devices but how does the Asus CDW-5224A perform with the other front runners? We find out a little later in the review.