Bij CDRLabs hebben ze eens gekeken naar de TEAC CD-W512EB, een 12/10/32 IDE CDRW drive. Het apparaat heeft net als de populaire PlexWriters ondersteuning voor BurnProof, die je dankzij de wat grotere buffer van 4MB buffer misschien minder vaak zal hoeven te gebruiken. Als voordeel heeft hij verder de veel betere seektimes t.o.v. zijn concurrenten, wat goed terug was te zien in de tests. Toch waren er twee goede redenen waarom hij niet de beste 12x drive genoemd kan worden. Zijn DAE snelheden bleven namelijk achter, maar wat vooral stoorde was de traagheid waarmee CD-RW schijfjes gewist werden. Dit bleek namelijk op maximaal 4x te kunnen (20 minuten wachten), terwijl de Plextor de klus in 8 minuten heeft geklaard.
My verdict? Teac has got an average 12x drive here. No it doesn't lead the pack like their old 6x and 8x CD-R's did. It merely runs with it. The CD-ROM performance of the drive is pretty good, exceeding the transfer rate and seek times of the Plextor in most cases. The 24x DAE performance is average. It reaches the top speed early on but its still no where near the 32x extraction rate of Plextor's 12/10/32 drives or the 40x extraction rate of the Yamaha. Don't get me wrong it does get the job done and does it better than 75% of the other drives out there.
On the other hand one thing that I didn't like was how long it took a long time to format CD-RW disks. If you do a lot of writing to and formatting of rewritable disks this might bother you. The other thing is that I would have liked to see Nero packaged in there instead of the usual Adaptec/Roxio software.
Otherwise there are no really good or bad things about the drive that really stick out to me. Like I said before, the drive is an average performer. I don't mean that in a bad way either. It really is a good drive for the price. Currently you can find an OEM (drive only) kit for under $170 on Pricewatch. The cheapest OEM 12x Plextor I found was $200. If you want a drive that can do everything the Plextor does.. for a few bucks cheaper this might be for you.