LG's new GSA-4166B internal DVD writer sits at the top of its Super Multi DVD writer range with the promise that it supports every DVD format you've ever heard of, plus a few more besides.

In essence the GSA-4166B is a GSA-4163B with the addition of LightScribe, however the Dual Layer writing speeds have also been tweaked so let's quickly run through the specification.

It's a standard five-and-a-quarter-inch drive with 2MB of cache and a very plain fascia that doesn't include a volume control or headphone jack. The package includes an audio cable, an IDE cable and fixing screws, as well as a software bundle of Nero Express 6.6, InCD 4, PowerDVD 5.0 and PowerProducer.

The burning speeds of the drive make for impressive reading with 16x support for both DVD-R and DVD+R (that's six minutes for a full DVD), 8x DVD+RW (14 minutes for a DVD), 6x DVD-RW, 4x DVD-R Dual Layer, 8x DVD+R Dual Layer and 5x DVD-RAM, as well as 16x DVD-ROM and 48x/32x/48x on the CD side of things.

In the past we could more or less stop the review right here as the LG supports every format and is very fast, but there are a couple of problems. For one thing we had to use Nero 7 to get the drive to behave, instead of the bundled Nero 6.6 software.

For another thing most of the specified speeds far outstrip the availability of media, and while you can get 16x DVD-R and DVD+R discs, RW media is limited to 4x speed at present and Dual Layer doesn't go any faster than 2.4x.

Normally we would take that in our stride as the GSA-4166B is standing by, ready to use faster media as it becomes available, and while we wait we have LightScribe to keep us entertained. Well yes, but the thing is that LightScribe is rather slow, and all LightScribe drives take about half an hour to burn a label.

Added to that we know full well that Blu Ray is just around the corner so it is inevitable that LG will release an updated Super Multi drive in six months' time which will offer genuinely exciting new features.

There's one final sting in the tail which is that NEC has added DVD-RAM support to its new ND-4550A, and that removes LG's unique selling point. In addition the NEC ND-4551A has a new labelling technology called Labelflash which is claimed to be faster than LightScribe. Watch this space.

For some time LG has had a unique product in its Super Multi DVD writer, and while the latest model is fast we can't get too excited about the addition of LightScribe. The LG also suffers in comparison to the new models from NEC, although it's still a highly capable drive.