Drives > 48x (CD) / 18x (DVD±R) / 8x (DVD±R DL) Drives > by Read Speed

Advantages: ummmmm
Disadvantages: Doesn't work very well, slow, intermitently recognises disks, poor back up service, need I go on?

I ordered my Freecom DVD Recorder LS USB 2.0 after my CD/DVD drive packed up on my 15 month old HP Desktop. I wanted it mainly to load CD ROM and burn DVD's from movies already converted to DVD format on my hard drive. Being that my PC had no disk drive I relied upon this external drive to load the bundled DVD burning software (Roxio 9). This took several days and many attempts. Then I tried burning my first DVD. After taking 3 hours to do a task ... Read review

Advantages: Reliable. Sturdy, Quiet
Disadvantages: None

...all freely avaliable on the samsung website to for this product and they too are easy enough to use .. Have never had any trouble with this drive and Its played every disc iv thrown at it so far, Also no coasters or burn errors so far out of 100 blank discs, It has a very nice build quality and runs so quietly you wouldnt no it was there or running ... Read review

Advantages: Fast, especially DVD-RAM, reads and writes everything
Disadvantages: No lightscribe

The LG GSA H22N Super-Multi is one of the first drives to up the maximum speed to 18X for DVD writing. Whilst not a huge increase on the 16X drives, it's a welcome boost. The various speeds and media types supported are: Read speed: 48x (CD) / 16x (DVD) Write speed: 48x (CD) 18x (DVD±R) 8x (DVD±R DL) Rewrite speed: 32x (CD) 6x (DVD-RW) 8x (DVD+RW) 12x (DVD-RAM) Far more of interest is the support for DVD-RAM which many consider a superior format ...
...over the years and the LG ones have tended to be the most reliable and smoothest to work with. The LG GSA H22N can be picked up for around £24 or less which is a good price for this kind of performance. If only dual layer disks had gotten a little cheaper... Overall a very nice drive for the price. It would have been nice to have Lightscribe for adding custom labels to suitable blank DVDs but apart from that there is little to complain about. ... Read review

Advantages: Cheap. SATA.
Disadvantages: None

I bought this as a budget DVD writer and that's what it is. I bought it white boxed with no cables and just the unit and the software CD. The user manual was on the CD and also it cam with; Nero Express 6 - Wizard for writing to the disk, in CD 4, Nero BackItUp - Utility to back up files onto DVDs/CDs, Nero Recode- DVD Recoding, Nero Vision Express - Making slide shows and DVD movies, DVD Lightscribe and Nero Showtime - A DVD player to watch DVDs ...
...value for money and is a fast useful DVD/CD drive which support nearly all widely used formats including DVD-RAM. It requires a spare SATA slot and uses a SATA power connector not the 4 Pin Molex connector. The SATA connector is useful as it requires much less space than a IDE cable which is usefull if you need good airflow through your computer. ... Read review

Advantages: Great at its job, quick, easy to use, easy to install
Disadvantages: Not fully reliable, not easy to fix

Ahh, i have a very mixed opinion on this product. This drive came pre installed on my desktop and was very faithful to me! It always worked and got the job done very well when i needed it! It burnt DVD's with ease and CD's even quicker! However i had one fateful day when i had to recover my PC and completely reset it! I re-installed all the drivers for all of my hardware and everything worked except... Lite-On SOHW-832S DVD/RW Combo drive i tried ...
...but it wasn't!!! It didn't recognise when a DVD or a CD was inserted and it would no longer burn! I uninstalled it and re-installed it countless times but nope! Nothing worked, so now my main desktop computer is without a CD Writing drive! I do not wish to put others off buying it though as when it worked it was very good! I'm sure mine is just a one off! ... Read review