Drives > Liteon Drives > up to 8x

Advantages: Lightweight, small, portable and has lightsribe technology.
Disadvantages: Quite expensive £70, not the fastest drive around

...extra feature. It was the Liteon SSM-85H5SX. The added extra was the Lightscribe technology meaning I can design an image and then burn it onto the top side of a specially made disk. SPECIFICATIONS This is just a list of read, write and rewrite speeds. The complicated way to explain this is to say that the first CD drive read a 150 Kbps (kilobits per second) and this is X so 2X is 2 times as fast (300 kbps) as just X, 3X is 3 times as fast (450 ...
...nowadays we work in bytes, there are 8 bits in a byte so this means that to find out how long it should take to burn a full CD (700 megabytes) you find out how many kilobits you have (1024 KB = 1MB) and then diving it by your speed and that is how long in seconds you should be able to write at. Just remember though that you usually won't run at the maximum speed that is possible. I'm sorry if I lost you completely there but to put it simply, the ... Read review

Advantages: Light, slim
Disadvantages: Needs external power :(

...baby is great. The LiteOn SLW-831SX is super slim and compact (about 15cm long, 13 cm wide and 2.5cm deep) due to the fact that it doesn't have a trap that comes out of the drive itself, it just uses a slot that you push the DVD or CD into and it then ejects out. Even though the SLW-831SX is slim it is also quite though and durable so if you're sitting at your table and you knock it off it won't break :) The SLW-831SX uses a USB2 connection that ...
...to worry about not being able to connect it to your computer (the USB2 cable comes with the drive so you don't have to go and buy it too) Now because it uses this USB2 connection is not as fast as say and IDE DVD RW that you would have in your PC but that not much of a problem because your paying for this drive to be external so it can be used anywhere (as long as there's a plug there lol) The drive writes at speeds of 8x (DVD-/+), 2.4x (DVD+R Dual ... Read review

Advantages: "works" with Mac and Windows
Disadvantages: Too many to list.

...work... (using Taiyo Yuden media bought from Microboards authorised retailers) >Manuals... inexistent! After days of bugging their support, a PDF was emailed over... > Support - rude and unhelpful most of the time. Takes days to get anything out of them In short? Stay well clear from this product! ... Read review

Advantages: Fast Write speeds, wide compatibilty, 20 speed dvd writing and CHEAP
Disadvantages: Not any that i've experienced!!

I found this to be an excellent drive as i picked up one for around £30 and that was when it came out(last year, june). I think that this is an excellent drive for the fact it has a wide range of DVD and CD writing features; 20 speed writing, my favourite feature is the light scribe feature which allows you to design your own cd labels on a special 'lightscribe disc'. The Drive was also quiet, but not too quiet. I found the OEM Box that the drive ... Read review

Advantages: Very Cheap, Changeable cover panels, Fast Speed
Disadvantages: No firmware, Region Locked, Major issues with burning regular cd's

...and thus bought it as LG has become more reputable. The Pros This drive was very easy to install. It was practically a plug and play drive. It also came with different front panels in order to change colors from black and white. Although this may seem pointless it is a factor to take into consideration if you are after certain specification like color for your computer. The drive has never had a problem playing any cd's DVD's and etc. It ...
...this drive as it seems LG has forgotten about this drive and moved on. 3) This final problem is the killer part of this drive and the reason it is ranked so low. When durng xvid files and various other files onto a CD to watch on an xvid player and part of the files which are over 350 mb will not work. Thus typically TV shows are 350 mbs and meaning half the disc is wasted. Despite the cheap prices of CD's these days it still is a waste. Conclusion ... Read review