Tim Zakharov van Storage Review brengt ons een review van de Yamaha CRW2100S. Deze SCSI-brander heeft een erg relaxte snelheid van 16/10/40. Uit een review van de IDE-versie van deze brander bleek dat er nogal wat minpunten waren. Zo bleek de 10x CAV rewrite snelheid erg teleurstellend en ook het ontbreken van een anti-bufferunderrun techniek was erg vervelend. De resultaten van dit SCSI-model laten ongeveer dezelde mankementen zien. De conclusie van de reviewer luidt dan ook dat je deze brander alleen moet aanschaffen als je persé een 16X SCSI-brander wil (inclusief hevige trillingen en een hoop lawaai), maar anders kun je nog maar beter even wachten:
Yamaha's SCSI entry in the high-speed CD-RW market has a lot going for it. First off, it's 16X and SCSI. Second, it claims 40X Max read speeds. Third, it claims 40X Max audio extraction. Finally, it advertises 10X rewrite speeds. All are either milestones or industry standards in recording/rewriting technology. Unfortunately, there are issues in all areas.
First, Yamaha chose partial CAV writes instead of full 16X CLV writes as competitors have debuted. In practice, this results in a paltry 15 second difference when burning 650 MB; the implication, however, is that the consumer gets less than what's advertised. Write and rewrite speeds up to this point have always been CLV - when one saw "12X" on the package, 12X was what one got. Yamaha puts "16X" in bold print on the front of their box, leaving the details in the fine print. If the other manufacturers took the P-CAV route because of some technical limitation inherent to achieving such speeds, this would be a non-issue. But 16X CLV drives from Plextor and TDK have already arrived with more on the way.
Next, we could not achieve 40X read speeds on pressed media. Only when we test with a custom-made 700 MB CD-R can we reach 40X at the outer edge. The drive also spins down frequently in operations involving random accesses. In some cases this brings performance levels down below what we've measured from competitors' 32X offerings.