Top 10 DVD Drives
Top 10 DVD Drives
Memorex's new drive has FireWire and USB.
All the latest DVD burners can write to DVD-R and +R at up to 16X, the expected end of the line for write-once DVD. But rewritable and dual-layer burners have room for faster speeds. Three new internal drives debut here, each reflecting recent speed tweaks: The inexpensive Lite-On SOHW-1673S and the Pioneer DVR-A09XL increased their DVD-RW support from 4X to 6X, while the Lite-On and the Sony DRU-720A raised their DVD+RW max from 4X to 8X.
DVD hardware continues to outpace media; we had to test the new drives with 4X discs (for both-RW and +RW), which is probably why we saw little performance improvement. New discs are expected to arrive this spring, but they're likely to be scarce.
Pioneer's drive is the first to offer native support for 6X double-layer DVD+R burning. We observed notable performance improvements with it, even using 2.4X media.
Among external burners, Memorex's new drive delivers the best mix of price and performance; BenQ's drive is also enticing, given its price and promised firmware updates.