Introduction

If you have been a PC enthusiast for the past few years, it would be criminal to not have heard of the brand ASUSTeK. Known to produce quality hardware, their mainboards have always been considered to be one of the most reliable ones around. Of course, like many top-tier mainboard vendors, ASUS don't just dabble in the mainboard industry but other peripherals such as graphics cards as well. And not too long ago, ASUS have also begun to ship their own brand of optical storage solutions to the PC market. With more computer users turning to CD-RW as a low-cost storage solution, it is not hard to see why ASUS is turning their eyes to this segment.

The ASUS 52x features a cushion on the tray to minimize vibration and noise.

So here we are today, with ASUS' latest CD-RW offering - CRW-5224A (our unit is based on the firmware version 1.16). Based on the latest 52x24x52x terminology, the ASUS writer also incorporates their own buffer-underrun protection and write speed control, known as FlextraLink and FlextraSpeed respectively. And like the AOpen 52x we saw not too long ago, the drive also comes with Double Dynamic Suspension System (DDSS II) to minimize vibration caused by the drive. We'll explain in more details about these ASUS-developed features in the next page.