The drive ships in a Retail package.

The box contains:

• Quick start instruction guide
• CD with software for recording and working with data
• CD-R Ricoh, High Speed CD-RW 4x-10x and DVD+RW Ricoh 4.7 GBytes discs
• 4 screws
• Analog cable for connecting the drive to a sound card.

ATIP: 97m 27s 66f Disc Manufacturer: Ricoh Company Ltd. Reflective layer: Dye (Short strategy; e.g. Phthalocyanine) Media type: CD-Recordable Recording Speeds: min. unknown - max. unknown nominal Capacity: 651.86 MBytes (74m 12s 00f / LBA: 333750)	ATIP: 97m 27s 00f Disc Manufacturer: Disc ID not allowed Reflective layer: Phase change Media type: CD-ReWritable Recording Speeds: min. 4X - max. 8X nominal Capacity: 651.86 MBytes (74m 12s 00f / LBA: 333750)

Ricoh is one of the most active members of the DVD+RW Alliance and it was first to develop a DVD+RW drive.

The DVD+RW drive was developed exactly for data storage, and first of all, for video data. That is why Ricoh equipped its device with a full set of programs meant for processing and recording of video data onto a disc.

MyDVD 3.1

The MyDVD program makes it easier to transfer data from analog devices onto a PC, as well as recording and encoding of video clips in MPEG2. The Direct-to-DVD technology helps to record data from analog devices directly onto DVD+RW discs. The MyDVD allows recording only real data, making a recording process easy even if there is less than 1 GBytes of data.

For support of video recording in DVD+RW format the version 3.0 needs an upgrade which would provide a possibility to add/edit data in the DVD-video format and make the drive compatible with current DVD-video players. The version 3.1 is capable of it.

The MyDVD has its main operations on just one panel.

The utility has the Wizard helper which makes the MyDVD a very handy tool for creation of projects even for a beginner.

B's Recorder GOLD (software for DVD/CD mastering)

This program supports creation of backup copies of computer data. It provides a high recording speed with the Back-Ground Formatting function. Besides, it allows recording DVD and CD by the drag & drop method and makes possible to start quick recording after just a minute of formatting. This program records discs in UDF1.5 format providing excellent compatibility.

The latest versions of the InCD are able to work with the UDF 1.5 file system, and the Nero Burning ROM can record DVD+RW discs in the ISO 9660 format.

That is why one will face an alternative: whether to use the good old InCD and Nero or the B's Recorder with the similar functions.

WinDVD (software for DVD-Video playback on a PC)

The WinDVD together with the PowerDVD is one of the most popular DVD-Video players. The WinDVD allows making minimized tabs of video scenes. There is also fully adjustable zoom and pan. The time delitation function allows playing clips at 0.5 to double speeds without changing sound quality.

The Ricoh Transfer Mode Change Utility makes possible to change a protocol for data transfer and to limit a read speed for CDs.

An IDE cable is lacking to some strange reason.

The Europeans are offered a two-year warranty from Ricoh.

If we exclude the DVD part of the MP5120A, the tested device will resemble a successful 12x 7120.

Ricoh is working without a break on debugging its firmware versions. Thus, the MP5120A arrived with the v1.36 was soon updated to v1.37. With the latter the drive passed all Advanced CDDAE tests, while with the previous one the utility had the following error:

Nevertheless, the device worked somewhat uncertainly in the RAW mode.

At present, the drive is not able to become region free.

The recorder works quietly, just sometimes whistles, however, that whistle will probably be muffled by coolers in the system case.

The appearance is typical of Ricoh.

Discs ejected are not too warm.

The tray goes out very fast.