Computer Reviews » DVD and CD Drive Reviews

Samsung SH-S182M 18x DVD Burner with Light Scribe

pumpkinslayer — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 04:51:17 +0000

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.

Lite-On Lightscribe 20x DVD Burner

pumpkinslayer — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 05:17:16 +0000

Faster is better, and the Lite-On DVD burner pushes the limits just that little bit more with write speeds of up to 20x. But does it deliver.

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.

Samsung Writemaster DVD Burner SH-S162L

pumpkinslayer — Thu, 11 May 2006 05:28:50 +0000

DVD writers can be fairly boring things to look at, unlike other parts of the computer like video cards and motherboards things don’t jump ahead and offer flashy upgrades.

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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