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Pioneer BDR-203BK review

Sasha Muller October 7, 2009

£182

Price when reviewed

Pioneer’s latest Blu-Ray writer, the BDR-203BK, might not look any different to its predecessor, the BDR-202BK, but behind its nondescript matte black fascia there lurks a significantly extended range of talents.

The drive shares its predecessor’s SATA interface and unassuming looks, but both read and write speeds have improved across the board. Write-once BD-R discs are now writeable at up to 8x speeds and, as the BDR-203BK counts dual-layer writing amongst its list of capabilities, that goes for both 25GB and 50GB BD-R media. BD-RE discs are still limited to a maximum write speed of just 2x, but dual-layer rewriteable discs are now supported. Read speeds have improved drastically too, with single-layer reads improving from 5x to 8x and dual-layer from 2x to 6x.

Even the drive’s DVD-writing capabilities have been given the once-over, with DVD-R/+R write speeds swelling from 12x to 16x, and dual-layer write speeds doubling to a heady 8x.

As usual, however, the lack of suitably rated blank media made actually testing the BDR-203BK somewhat tricky. Our 25GB TDK BD-R was rated to 4x speed writing, but fortunately the drive recognised it as being capable of 8x write speeds. Nero DiscSpeed filled the disc in just 14 min 49 seconds, an average write speed of 6.79x, and almost ten minutes quicker than its predecessor.

Pioneer kindly supplied us with a couple of TDK blank discs, and the drive filled the 50GB BD-R in just over 30 min. The 50GB BD-RE took significantly longer, however, completing just after breaking the one and half hour mark.

The BDR-203BK’s high price is made a little more palatable thanks to the presence of Cyberlink’s Blu-Ray Disc Suite 6, a software package which provides DVD and BluRay movie playback courtesy of PowerDVD as well as basic video editing, disc burning and photo editing suites.

In the final reckoning the BDR-203BK’s downfall isn’t due to its performance or range of abilities, both of which are well up to par, but rather the prohibitive cost of blank Blu-Ray media. At over £6 exc VAT for a write once disc with 25GB of capacity, Blu-Ray just isn??t a viable backup medium. For HD video enthusiasts keen to archive their high-definition footage onto a playable format, the £182 asking price and the cost of blank media might be one worth swallowing, but with Blu-Ray readers available for as little as £61 exc VAT, and hard drives offering a far lower cost per gigabyte, most people would be advised to steer clear.