LG GGW-H20L Blu-ray Writer

Ever since Blu-ray emerged as the winner in the HD wars, there's been a steady rise in the number of manufacturers offering drives based on this format for laptops – and now, desktops. LG, with its GGW-HXXX series, is one. The GGW-H20L drive is LG's second generation drive with 6x BD-R writing support, HD-DVD playback, and a range of burning capabilities for normal CDs/DVDs, including Lightscribe.

Before we proceed, I'd like to point out that due to unavoidable circumstances we were badly hampered (to know about the problems we faced, read on). Being PC-based, the H20L is a straightforward drive with just a polished black front panel. Connectivity is via SATA, which has become common. There is nothing much to report about its profile, as it’s identical to just about every ODD out there.

For our performance tests, we used a rig with these specifications:
AMD X2 4800 with 2GB RAM
Nvidia 9800 GTX GPU
Viewsonic 22-inch Vx2255WM
BenQ 24-inch G2400W

Testing this drive was a challenge in itself. Due to a severe lack of Blu-ray media in India, we had to resort to getting these imported at quite a prohibitive cost. The discs we used were Sony’s 25 GB BD-RE 2X and Panasonic's BD 25 GB 2x BD-R. Despite our best efforts, we were simply unable to secure faster media and due to this we had to change our plans. The initial idea was to do a comprehensive Blu-ray media shootout, but this obviously had to be scuttled.