Burn DVDs easily and with high speed, with the added advantage of burning images onto the top of the DVD.

There’s not too much difference between DVD burners, usually they just work or they don’t. DVD burners have hit the peak of their speeds and 18x or 20x is the most that you find around nowadays.

The Samsung DVD burner offers up to 18x burning speed, which allows full movies to be burnt in a few minutes and offers burning to all the popular DVD formats. Here are some of the features:

• 2 MB of cache
• DVD+R max write speed: 18x
• DVD+RW max write speed: 8x
• DVD-R max write speed: 8x
• DVD-RW max write speed: 6x
• DVD max read speed: 6x
• CD max write speed: 48x
• CD max read speed: 40x

The biggest plus is to the drive is being able to flip the disc over and burning a cover onto the DVD, handy for getting a nice looking image on the front rather than just a permanent marker.

There is not too much to consider with DVD burners and much of the difference between them is in the software that comes packaged with the drive. The Lite-On 20x DVD drive only writes at 20x, here is the full set of read and write features:

• DVD+R write speed: 20x
• DVD+RW rewrite speed: 8x
• DVD-R write speed: 20x
• DVD-RW rewrite speed: 6x

The warning signs are all over this product unfortunately.

I have used a Lite-On CD burner for over 5 years now and it still works great, but companies do have their rough patches.

User reviews of this product are a mixed batch. Many people have had problems installing it and getting it working. One or two bad experiences could be overlooked, but play it safe and don’t buy this one.

Check it out if you like, but rather go for a Sony, and pass up the 20x in favor of a reliable drive.

DVD burners are however a very necessary part of many desktop computers, and though they are sometimes only used occassionally, they are a pain when they don’t work.

If you use them all the time, the concern falls to whether they will operate at the speeds that they claim they will, and for everyone it is a matter of reliability. With many discs being wasted through bad burns, and much frustration being created at the same time, it is still of vital importance that the drive actually works, all the time.

The Samsung DVD writer does that with ease. It does not stand out as anything spectacular, but in tests at Techgage it managed to not produce any coasters and managed all of the discs even while multi-tasking.

In the tests a CD took just under 3 minutes, a single layer DVD took around 6 and a dual-layer took 43 minutes. The slow speed of the dual-layer is just due to the technology and is still much slower than single layer.

With no gripes and complete success with the main tasks this writer will be suitable for all your applications. If you are looking for something reliable then this will do the trick, and for my liking that does it for a DVD burner.

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The price of the Plextor px716uf is just over 200 dollars. This is still fairly expensive, but not too exhorbitant. At this price its still way over that of an internal unit, but puts it much more in the view of those who would like something portable.

Plextor are a very well known name in the optical drive business. They have been around for years and have had their share of top-performing drives. The Plextor DVD±RW dual-layer DVD writer adds to that by bringing internal speed writing to an external drive. It really can match the speed of internal drives, which makes it even more appealing as a portable.

Basic features include…

• 16x write speed for DVD±R media
• 8x for DVD+RW and 4x for DVD-RW
• 4x DVD+R Dual layer writing speed
• USB 2.0 and Firewire connection
• Portable, of course

With flash memory sticks making such a big impact in the portable media segment, its easy to try and compare them, but of course they are intended for different purposes. Although memory sticks can offer large space, they are limited to what they have onboard, they are very small and can be transported with ease. This drive is not so small, and would probably need a small bag, or space in your laptop bag to carry it and it’s power adapter.

It does offer the ability to change disks. You can just carry a few DVDs and have a nearly unlimited amount of space for data. That is the real plus of the drive.

Any drive from Plextor is worth a look at and there is a certain cool factor to having a super-fast portable DVD writer. I don’t know if that really does it for most people, but hey.

The drive excels if you want to transport a large amount of information. It does not beat a memory stick for day to day transport of a few files and data. But if you want a great drive that can be used in a few locations or you want to transport large data quantities, the Plextor PX716 dvd±rw dual-layer dvd writer is certainly worth a look.

Portable devices have been around for a while, and with the advent of memory sticks and other portable devices the optical drives like portable DVD and CD drives have taken a bit of a back seat in terms of popularity.

The Cyberhome DVD recorder offers an affordable solution for those looking for a portable DVD recorder. In terms of price the cyberhome dvd recorder falls right up there with the best value. There are very few DVD recorders cheaper then this one, which does beg the question, is it any good?

Here is a basic feature list…

• 16x read speed
• 16x write speed for DVD+R and DVD-R
• 4x for DVD+RW, DVD-RW and DVD+R Dual layer
• Support for both USB and FireWire

These are pretty good specs for a cheap dvd recorder.

Back to the performance. There have been few consumer complaints about this product. This is not too unexpected as even the cheapest products do what they are supposed to do, just depends how long and well they do them for.

Other people who bought the cyberhome dvd recorder found it to be reliable and to perform the task its intended for, and that is writing DVDs and being able to do it in different locations.

Praise for the drive itself include the ability to just plug it in and not be able to install drivers, although that’s mostly to do with Windows XP. It also managed to do it on a non-windows system too which is great news for those running other systems.

A few production faults have been noted, most of which are cosmetic, rather than to do with the main functioning of the device. One customer reported the drive tray not appearing closed (still functioning) and the little indicator lights not working. These are genuine complaints, but would be most easily fixed with a more expensive bigger name brand burner.

Overall I feel it is good value for the money, if you are going for a discount deal there will be problems, which is something to expect. However for the money you can’t really go wrong. There are no problems with the recorder itself. So I recommend it for a value deal.

Pros

• Fast
• Good functionality
• Cheap

Cons

• No firewire cable (just a little something that could be included)

This drive is a great way to store those family movies safely for a long time.

Toshiba are well known for their cheap laptop computers, but they also make other components.

The Toshiba DVD burner writes DVDs at speed that rival the fastest around today. It can write DVD+R format at 16x while handling DVD-R at a still respectable 12x.

It can write any DVD format, as well as being able to write to DVD dual layer discs. Dual layer allows two lots of information to be stored “on top of each other” on the shiny side of the DVD. Many years back, before this technology, DVD movies would have discs with two shiny (containing information) sides. Almost all of the newer ones use Dual Layer.

A very affordable drive. Probably not a true high performance drive, but still capable of handling everything that can be thrown at it when used with a low cost desktop computer.

This drive would certainly prove useful for people who want to use the drive on more than one computer. It offers 16x writing on both formats as well as supporting dual layer burning.

My only gripe is the pricetag, nearly 250 bucks. Yes, it’s a cool looking and useful burner, but for that price, if you were going to move it between 4 or less locations, you could just buy internals for each place.

With that said it is still useful. For those who plan to do lots of data transfer on many computers, this high speed machine would suit well. Offering good speeds and useability.

You would still have to install software at every place you use the burner too, but for the buyer who has nearly everything, this is a good buy.

The speeds of this writer make it one of the fatest too. No suffering waiting for this drive. At only a smidgen over fifty bucks, this drive is the perfect addition for those looking to upgrade.

Although this drive comes with free software, reports have it that it does not do a good job. The software might be suitable for you if you don’t do too much burning, but an upgrade is probably necessary.

With that said, many other writers in this price range don’t come with any software, so you at least have something to try out first.

Great value for a wholesale dvdr.