It's practically identical to the previous ND-4550 model in read/write quality of various discs.

If NEC does not rest on its laurels, but carries on with its development to get rid of its major flaws, this technology will have very good prospects. Besides, theoretically there must be a way to add LabelFlash to any drives, based on a similar NEC chipset. But in my opinion, LabelFlash technology is more promising, as it does not require any hardware updates (there already appeared firmware versions in Internet that upgrade NEC models warranty will be lost in this case). Of course you will agree with me that this technology is of limited use, because nobody will sacrifice, say, video quality to burn an extra label on the data side of a disc. But LabelFlash has an additional advantage - it allows to burn images on the data side of discs. So the Lightscribe/LabelFlash comparison will be against a LabelFlash image. The most annoying thing is the shiny surface of LabelFlash discs, which seriously deteriorates the image perception quality, just as the white-blue gamma of the label layer. But as usual, there is a fly in the ointment. With the appearance of LabelFlash users got quite a powerful tool for burning high quality labels on their discs. NEC offers a different option called Labelflash, with which labels are created using the DVD burner's laser. The top of the Labelflash disc is a shimmering blue. Labelflash: A Proprietary NEC Product.While discs for Labelflash cost about $2.5 (€2), prices for LightScribe. The selection of discs and burners is much larger with LightScribe, however, a fact reflected in the price of blank discs.FYI - If you have access to Labelflash and LightScribe discs, these are not interchangeable for 'laser label burn' but the.data.As we found no other differences in specifications of the new ND-4551 versus ND-4550, the main interest to the new model may be directed only at the new labeling technology. But NEC didn't license this technology and developed its own, similar, but more interesting technology, called LabelFlash.

If you keep tabs on the optical storage news, you may have noticed the curious Lightscribe technology that allows to use a standard laser to draw high-quality labels on CD/DVD with special coating. What's this modification about? If you expect hardware changes, I'm afraid I'll disappoint you: 45 models are absolutely identical inside all changes come down to firmware. Similar modifications were made to the ND-3550, which got the name ND-3551. Almost right after the launch of the flagship DVD recorder NEC ND-4550, there appeared an interesting modification of this model, called ND-4551.

Labelflash software installer