Digital Trends

Sony DRU-800A

June 13th, 2005 | by Ian Bell

Features and Design

Sony has stuck with the tried-and-true design of their DVD writers. The DRU-800A is very similar in appearance to the previous generation drives, specifically the DRU-710A and 720A recorders. All three units share the same clear plastic drive cover and interchangeable faceplates. If you have a black PC the included black faceplate will look great with your system. The black faceplate is not as futuristic looking as the white faceplate, but it gets the job done. The only difference in appearance from what we can tell is a small sticker on the front of the drive that says the DRU-800A supports both DVD+/-R DL media.

The front of the drive does not have a volume control or a headphone jack, buts that ok — how many people do you know that actually uses them? There is a single LED on the front of the drive that lights up a bright green during both the reading and writing process. Nitpicking a little, we would have liked a red LED to indicate that the drive was writing instead of green.

Packaged with the drive itself is an IDE cable, the Nero burning ROM 6 SE software, a fold out guide and the two faceplates. Sony does not include any media with the DRU-800A so you will have to purchase that separately. Sony recommends using Verbatim brand media with their writers.

The front of the Sony DRU-800A

Write speeds that the 800A supports include: 16X DVD+R, 8X DVD+RW, 16X DVD-R, 6X DVD-RW, 48X CD-R, 24X CD-RW, 4X DVD+R DL and 4X DVD-R DL . Read speeds are rated at 16X for DVD-ROM, and 40X for CD-ROM media. For detailed specifications, please click on the “specs” tab and link above and below this review.

The Sony DRU-800A features a 2MB internal buffer and incorporates PowerBurn technology into the drive to help prevent buffer underruns errors. The DRU-800A is only compatible with Windows based systems and requires a minimum of an Intel Pentium III 800 MHz CPU or equivalent, 128MB of memory and Windows 98 SE/ME/2000/XP.