Storage Review heeft een review gemaakt van de Sony Spressa CRX160E IDE herbrander. Dit nieuw 12x8x32 model beschikt helaas niet over een burnproof of JustLink anti bufferunderrun feature, maar alleen over een buffer van 4MB. Een bijkomend nadeel zijn de matige leeskwaliteiten van de drive ten opzichte van Plextor en Ricoh burners. Ondanks dit bleek hij wel zeer snel te kunnen branden; in deze tests eindigde hij vaak bovenaan. Toch blijft hij dankzij een relatief hoge prijs geen aanrader:
Sony's latest ATAPI CD-RW offering is a mixed bag. When compared to the competition, it lags at reading CDs, in digital audio extraction, and writing to CD-RWs, but our tests show it to be one of the fastest 12X CD-R writers around. We were also impressed with the CRX160E's utter operating silence and cool operation. It appears as if Sony took great pains to soundproof this drive, as even high speed random seeks were nearly inaudible. Our stress tests showed admirable performance when faced with high CPU loads, despite the lack of any buffer underrun prevention technology. Still, BURN-Proof or JustLink enabled drives have an undeniable leg up on the CRX160E when it comes to eliminating buffer underruns.
Sony's CRX160E warrants consideration to those primarily interested in CD-R writing, strictly because of its outstanding CD-R write speeds. However, with the competition offering superior CD read and CD-RW writing performance, faster digital audio extraction, a better software package, as well as buffer underrun protection at a similar price point, its difficult to recommend this drive over units such as the Plextor 12/10/32A.